Wolves of the Calla

ONE

Behind the cottage of Rosalita Munoz was a tall privy painted sky-blue. Jutting from the wall to the left as the gunslinger entered, late on the morning after Pere Callahan had finished his story, was a plain iron band with a small disc of steel set eight inches or so beneath. Within this skeletal vase was a double sprig of saucy susan. Its lemony, faintly astringent smell was the privy's only aroma. On the wall above the seat of ease, in a frame and beneath glass, was a picture of the Man Jesus with his praying hands held just below his chin, his reddish locks spilling over his shoulders, and his eyes turned up to His Father. Roland had heard there were tribes of slow mutants who referred to the Father of Jesus as Big Sky Daddy.

The image of the Man Jesus was in profile, and Roland was glad. Had He been facing him full on, the gunslinger wasn't sure he could have done his morning business without closing his eyes, full though his bladder was. Strange place to put a picture of God's Son, he thought, and then realized it wasn't strange at all. In the ordinary course of things, only Rosalita used this privy, and the Man Jesus would have nothing to look at but her prim back.

Roland Deschain burst out laughing, and when he did, his water began to flow.

TWO

Rosalita had been gone when he awoke, and not recently: her side of the bed had been cold. Now, standing outside her tall blue oblong of a privy and buttoning his flies, Roland looked up at the sun and judged the time as not long before noon. Judging such things without a clock, glass, or pendulum had become tricky in these latter days, but it was still possible if you were careful in your calculations and willing to allow for some error in your result. Cort, he thought, would be aghast if he saw one of his pupils-one of his graduated pupils, a gunslinger-beginning such a business as this by sleeping almost until midday. And this was the beginning. All the rest had been ritual and preparation, necessary but not terribly helpful. A kind of dancing the rice-song. Now that part was over. And as for sleeping late…

"No one ever deserved a late lying-in more," he said, and walked down the slope. Here a fence marked the rear of Callahan's patch (or perhaps the Pere thought of it as God's patch). Beyond it was a small stream, babbling as excitedly as a little girl telling secrets to her best friend. The banks were thick with saucy susan, so there was another mystery (a minor one) solved. Roland breathed deeply of the scent.

He found himself thinking of ka, which he rarely did. (Eddie, who believed Roland thought of little else, would have been astounded.) Its only true rule was Stand aside and let me work. Why in God's name was it so hard to learn such a simple thing? Why always this stupid need to meddle? Every one of them had done it; every one of them had known Susannah Dean was pregnant. Roland himself had known almost since the time of her kindling, when Jake had come through from the house in Dutch Hill. Susannah herself had known, in spite of the bloody rags she had buried at the side of the trail. So why had it taken them so long to have the palaver they'd had last night? Why had they made such a business of it? And how much might have suffered because of it?

Nothing, Roland hoped. But it was hard to tell, wasn't it?

Perhaps it was best to let it go. This morning that seemed like good advice, because he felt very well. Physically, at least. Hardly an ache or a-

"I thought'ee meant to turn in not long after I left ye, gunslinger, but Rosalita said you never came in until almost the dawn."

Roland turned from the fence and his thoughts. Callahan was today dressed in dark pants, dark shoes, and a dark shirt with a notched collar. His cross lay upon his bosom and his crazy white hair had been partially tamed, probably with some sort of grease. He bore the gunslinger's regard for a little while and then said, "Yesterday I gave the Holy Communion to those of the smallholds who take it. And heard their confessions. Today's my day to go out to the ranches and do the same. There's a goodish number of cowboys who hold to what they mostly call the Crossway. Rosalita drives me in the buckboard, so when it comes to lunch and dinner, you must shift for yourselves."

"We can do that," Roland said, "but do you have a few minutes to talk to me?"

"Of course," Callahan said. "A man who can't stay a bit shouldn't approach in the first place. Good advice, I think, and not just for priests."

"Would you hear my confession?"

Callahan raised his eyebrows. "Do'ee hold to the Man Jesus, then?"

Roland shook his head. "Not a bit. Will you hear it anyway, I beg? And keep it to yourself?"

Callahan shrugged. "As to keeping what you say to myself, that's easy. It's what we do. Just don't mistake discretion for absolution." He favored Roland with a wintry smile. "We Catholics save that for ourselves, may it do ya."

The thought of absolution had never crossed Roland's mind, and he found the idea that he might need it (or that this man could give it) almost comic. He rolled a cigarette, doing it slowly, thinking of how to begin and how much to say. Callahan waited, respectfully quiet.

At last Roland said, "There was a prophecy that I should draw three and that we should become ka-tet. Never mind who made it; never mind anything that came before. I won't worry that old knot, never again if I can help it. There were three doors. Behind the second was the woman who became Eddie's wife, although she did not at that time call herself Susannah…"

THREE

So Roland told Callahan the part of their story which bore directly upon Susannah and the women who had been before her. He concentrated on how they'd saved Jake from the doorkeeper and drawn the boy into Mid-World, telling how Susannah (or perhaps at that point she had been Detta) had held the demon of the circle while they did their work. He had known the risks, Roland told Callahan, and he had become certain-even while they were still riding Blaine the Mono-that she had not survived the risk of pregnancy. He had told Eddie, and Eddie hadn't been all that surprised. Then Jake had told him. Scolded him with it, actually. And he had taken the scolding, he said, because he felt it was deserved. What none of them had fully realized until last night on the porch was that Susannah herself had known, and perhaps for almost as long as Roland. She had simply fought harder.

"So, Pere-what do you think?"

"You say her husband agreed to keep the secret," Callahan replied. "And even Jake-who sees clearly-"

"Yes," Roland said. "He does. He did. And when he asked me what we should do, I gave him bad advice. I told him we'd be best to let ka work itself out, and all the time I was holding it in my hands, like a caught bird."

"Things always look clearer when we see them over our shoulder, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Did you tell her last night that she's got a demon's spawn growing in her womb?"

"She knows it's not Eddie's."

"So you didn't. And Mia? Did you tell her about Mia, and the casde banqueting hall?"

"Yes," Roland said. "I think hearing that depressed her but didn't surprise her. There was the other-Detta-ever since the accident when she lost her legs." It had been no accident, but Roland hadn't gone into the business of Jack Mort with Callahan, seeing no reason to do so. "Detta Walker hid herself well from Odetta Holmes. Eddie and Jake say she's a schizophrenic." Roland pronounced this exotic word with great care.

"But you cured her," Callahan said. "Brought her face-to-face with her two selves in one of those doorways. Did you not?"

Roland shrugged. "You can burn away warts by painting them with silver metal, Pere, but in a person prone to warts, they'll come back."

Callahan surprised him by throwing his head back to the sky and bellowing laughter. He laughed so long and hard he finally had to take his handkerchief from his back pocket and wipe his eyes with it. "Roland, you may be quick with a gun and as brave as Satan on Saturday night, but you're no psychiatrist. To compare schizophrenia to warts... oh, my!"

"And yet Mia is real, Pere. I've seen her myself. Not in a dream, as Jake did, but with my own two eyes."

"Exactly my point," Callahan said. "She's not an aspect of the woman who was born Odetta Susannah Holmes. She is she."

"Does it make a difference?"

"I think it does. But here is one thing I can tell you for sure: no matter how things lie in your fellowship-your ka-tet-this must be kept a dead secret from the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Today, things are going your way. But if word got out that the female gunslinger with the brown skin might be carrying a demon-child, the folken'd go the other way, and in a hurry. With Eben Took leading the parade. I know that in the end you'll decide your course of action based on your own assessment of what the Calla needs, but the four of you can't beat the Wolves without help, no matter how good you are with such calibers as you carry. There's too much to manage." Reply was unneccessary. Callahan was right. "What is it you fear most?" Callahan asked.

"The breaking of the tet," Roland said at once.

"By that you mean Mia's taking control of the body they share and going off on her own to have the child?"

"If that happened at the wrong time, it would be bad, but all might still come right. "If Susannah came back. But what she carries is nothing but poison with a heartbeat." Roland looked bleakly at the religious in his black clothes. "I have every reason to believe it would begin its work by slaughtering the mother."

"The breaking of the tet," Callahan mused. "Not the death of your friend, but the breaking of the tet. I wonder if your friends know what sort of man you are, Roland?"

"They know," Roland said, and on that subject said no more.

"What would you have of me?"

"First, an answer to a question. It's clear to me that Rosalita knows a good deal of rough doctoring. Would she know enough to turn the baby out before its time? And the stomach for what she might find?"

They would all have to be there, of course-he and Eddie, Jake, too, as little as Roland liked the thought of it. Because the thing inside her had surely quickened by now, and even if its time hadn't come, it would be dangerous. And its time is almost certainly close, he thought. / don't know it for sure, but I feel it. I -

The thought broke off as he became aware of Callahan's expression: horror, disgust, and mounting anger.

"Rosalita would never do such a thing. Mark well what I say. She'd die first."

Roland was perplexed. "Why?"

"Because she's a Catholic!"

"I don't understand."

Callahan saw the gunslinger really did not, and the sharpest edge of his anger was blunted. Yet Roland sensed that a great deal remained, like the bolt behind the head of an arrow. "It's abortion you're talking about!"

"Yes?"

"Roland… Roland." Callahan lowered his head, and when he raised it, the anger appeared to be gone. In its place was a stony obduracy the gunslinger had seen before. Roland could no more break it than he could lift a mountain with his bare hands. "My church divides sins into two: venial sins, which are bearable in the sight of God, and mortal ones, which are not. Abortion is a mortal sin. It is murder."

"Pere, we are speaking of a demon, not a human being."

"So you say. That's God's business, not mine."

"And if it kills her? Will you say the same then and so wash your hands of her?"

Roland had never heard the tale of Pontius Pilate and Callahan knew it. Still, he winced at the image. But his reply was firm enough. "You who spoke of the breaking of your tet before you spoke of the taking of her life! Shame on you. Shame."

"My quest-the quest of my ka-tet-is the Dark Tower, Pere. It's not saving this world we're about, or even this universe, but all universes. All of existence."

"I don't care," Callahan said. "I can't care. Now listen to me, Roland son of Steven, for I would have you hear me very well. Are you listening?"

Roland sighed. "Say thankya."

"Rosa won't give the woman an abortion. There are others in town who could, I have no doubt-even in a place where children are taken every twenty-some years by monsters from the dark land, such filthy arts are undoubtedly preserved-but if you go to one of them, you won't need to worry about the Wolves. I'll raise every hand in Calla Bryn Sturgis against you long before they come."

Roland gazed at him unbelievingly. "Even though you know, as I'm sure you do, that we may be able to save a hundred other children? Human children, whose first task on earth would not be to eat their mothers?"

Callahan might not have heard. His face was very pale. "I'll have more, do it please ya… and even if it don't. I'll have your word, sworn upon the face of your father, that you'll never suggest an abortion to the woman herself."

A queer thought came to Roland: Now that this subject had arisen-had pounced upon them, like Jilly out of her box-Susannah was no longer Susannah to this man. She had become the woman. And another thought: How many monsters had Pere Callahan slain himself, with his own hand?

As often happened in times of extreme stress, Roland's father spoke to him. This situation is not quite beyond saving, but should you carry on much further -should you give voice to such thoughts -it will be.

"I want your promise, Roland."

"Or you'll raise the town."

"Aye."

"And suppose Susannah decides to abort herself? Women do it, and she's very far from stupid. She knows the stakes."

"Mia-the baby's true mother-will prevent it."

"Don't be so sure. Susannah Dean's sense of self-preservation is very strong. And I believe her dedication to our quest is even stronger."

Callahan hesitated. He looked away, lips pressed together in a tight white line. Then he looked back. "You will prevent it," he said. "As her dinh."

Roland thought, I have just been Castled.

"All right," he said. "I will tell her of our talk and make sure she understands the position you've put us in. And I'll tell her that she must not tell Eddie."

"Why not?"

"Because he'd kill you, Pere. He'd kill you for your interference."

Roland was somewhat gratified by the widening of Callahan's eyes. He reminded himself again that he must raise no feelings in himself against this man, who simply was what he was. Had he not already spoken to them of the trap he carried with him wherever he went?

"Now listen to me as I've listened to you, for you now have a responsibility to all of us. Especially to 'the woman.' "

Callahan winced a little, as if struck. But he nodded. "Tell me what you'd have."

"For one thing, I'd have you watch her when you can. Like a hawk! In particular I'd have you watch for her working her fingers here." Roland rubbed above his left eyebrow. "Or here." Now he rubbed at his left temple. "Listen to her way of speaking. Be aware if it speeds up. Watch for her to start moving in little jerks." Roland snapped a hand up to his head, scratched it, snapped it back down. He tossed his head to the right, then looked back at Callahan. "You see?"

"Yes. These are the signs that Mia is coming?"

Roland nodded. "I don't want her left alone anymore when she's Mia. Not if I can help it."

"I understand," Callahan said. "But Roland, it's hard for me to believe that a newborn, no matter who or what the father might have been-"

"Hush," Roland said. "Hush, do ya." And when Callahan had duly hushed: "What you think or believe is nothing to me. You've yourself to look out for, and I wish you well. But if Mia or Mia's get harms Rosalita, Pere, I'll hold you responsible for her injuries. You'll pay to my good hand. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Roland." Callahan looked both abashed and calm. It was an odd combination.

"All right. Now here's the other thing you can do for me. Comes the day of the Wolves, I'm going to need six folken I can absolutely trust. I'd like to have three of each sex."

"Do you care if some are parents with children at risk?"

"No. But not all. And none of the ladies who may be throwing the dish-Sarey, Zalia, Margaret Eisenhart, Rosalita. They'll be somewhere else."

"What do you want these six for?"

Roland was silent.

Callahan looked at him a moment longer, then sighed. "Reuben Caverra," he said. "Reuben's never forgot his sister and how he loved her. Diane Caverra, his wife… or do'ee not want couples?"

No, a couple would be all right. Roland twirled his fingers, gesturing for the Pere to continue.

"Cantab of the Manni, I sh'd say; the children follow him like he was the Pied Piper."

"I don't understand."

"You don't need to. They follow him, that's the important part. Bucky Javier and his wife… and what would you say to your boy, Jake? Already the town children follow him with their eyes, and I suspect a number of the girls are in love with him."

"No, I need him."

Or can't bear to have him out of your sight? Callahan wondered… but did not say. He had pushed Roland as far as was prudent, at least for one day. Further, actually.

"What of Andy, then? The children love him, too. And he'd protect them to the death."

"Aye? From the Wolves?"

Callahan looked troubled. Actually it had been rock-cats he'd been thinking of. Them, and the sort of wolves that came on four legs. As for the ones that came out of Thunderclap…

"No," Roland said. "Not Andy."

"Why not? For 'tisn't to fight the Wolves you want these six for, is it?"

"Not Andy," Roland repeated. It was just a feeling, but his feelings were his version of the touch. "There's time to think about it, Pere… and we'll think, too."

"You're going out into the town."

"Aye. Today and every day for the next few."

Callahan grinned. "Your friends and I would call it 'schmoozing.' It's a Yiddish word."

"Aye? What tribe are they?"

"An unlucky one, by all accounts. Here, schmoozing is called commala. It's their word for damned near everything." Callahan was a little amused by how badly he wanted to regain the gunslinger's regard. A little disgusted with himself, as well. "In any case, I wish you well with it."

Roland nodded. Callahan started up toward the rectory, where Rosalita already had harnessed the horses to the buck-board and now waited impatiently for Callahan to come, so they could be about God's work. Halfway up the slope, Callahan turned back.

"I do not apologize for my beliefs," he said, "but if I have complicated your work here in the Calla, I'm sorry."

"Your Man Jesus seems to me a bit of a son of a bitch when it comes to women," Roland said. "Was He ever married?"

The corners of Callahan's mouth quirked. "No," he said, "but His girlfriend was a whore."

"Well," Roland said, "that's a start."

FOUR

Roland went back to leaning on the fence. The day called out to him to begin, but he wanted to give Callahan a head start. There was no more reason for this than there had been for rejecting Andy out of hand; just a feeling.

He was still there, and rolling another smoke, when Eddie came down the hill with his shirt flapping out behind him and his boots in one hand.

"Hile, Eddie," Roland said.

"Hile, boss. Saw you talking with Callahan. Give us this day, our Wilma and Fred."

Roland raised his eyebrows.

"Never mind," Eddie said. "Roland, in all the excitement I never got a chance to tell you Gran-pere's story. And it's important."

"Is Susanna up?"

"Yep. Having a wash. Jake's eating what looks like a twelve-egg omelet."

Roland nodded. "I've fed the horses. We can saddle them while you tell me the old man's tale."

"Don't think it'll take that long," Eddie said, and it didn't. He came to the punchline-which the old man had whispered into his ear-just as they reached the barn. Roland turned toward him, the horses forgotten. His eyes were blazing. The hands he clamped on Eddie's shoulders-even the diminished right-were powerful.

"Repeat it!"

Eddie took no offense. "He told me to lean close. I did. He said he'd never told anyone but his son, which I believe. Tian and Zalia know he was out there-or says he was-but they don't know what he saw when he pulled the mask off the thing. I don't think they even know Red Molly was the one who dropped it. And then he whispered…" Once again Eddie told Roland what Tian's Gran-pere claimed to have seen.

Roland's glare of triumph was so brilliant it was frightening. "Gray horses!" he said. "All those horses the exact same shade! Do you understand now, Eddie? Do you?"

"Yep," Eddie said. His teeth appeared in a grin. It was not particularly comforting, that grin. "As the chorus girl said to the businessman, we've been here before."

FIVE

In standard American English, the word with the most gradations of meaning is probably run. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary offers one hundred and seventy-eight options, beginning with "to go quickly by moving the legs more rapidly than at a walk" and ending with "melted or liquefied." In the Crescent-Callas of the borderlands between Mid-World and Thunderclap, the blue ribbon for most meanings would have gone to commala. If the word were listed in the Random House Unabridged, the first definition (assuming they were assigned, as is common, in order of widest usage), would have been "a variety of rice grown at the furthermost eastern edge of All-World." The second one, however would have been "sexual intercourse." The third would have been "sexual orgasm," as in Did'ee come commala'? (The hoped-for reply being Aye, say thankya, commala big-big.) To wet the commala is to irrigate the rice in a dry time; it is also to masturbate. Commala is the commencement of some big and joyful meal, like a family feast (not the meal itself, do ya, but the moment of beginning to eat). A man who is losing his hair (as Garrett Strong was that season), is coming commala. Putting animals out to stud is damp commala. Gelded animals are dry commala, although no one could tell you why. A virgin is green commala, a menstruating woman is red commala, an old man who can no longer make iron before the forge is-say sorry-sof' commala. To stand commala is to stand belly-to-belly, a slang term meaning "to share secrets." The sexual connotations of the word are clear, but why should the rocky arroyos north of town be known as the commala draws? For that matter, why is a fork sometimes a commala, but never a spoon or a knife? There aren't a hundred and seventy-eight meanings for the word, but there must be seventy. Twice that, if one were to add in the various shadings. One of the meanings- it would surely be in the top ten-is that which Pere Callahan denned as schmoozing. The actual phrase would be something like "come Sturgis commala," or "come Bryna commala." The literal meaning would be to stand belly-to-belly with the community as a whole.

During the following five days, Roland and his ka-tet attempted to continue this process, which the outworlders had begun at Took's General Store. The going was difficult at first ("Like trying to light a fire with damp kindling," Susannah said crossly after their first night), but little by little, the folken came around. Or at least warmed up to them. Each night, Roland and the Deans returned to the Pere's rectory. Each late afternoon or evening, Jake returned to the Rocking B Ranch. Andy took to meeting him at the place where the B's ranch-road split off from East Road and escorting him the rest of the way, each time making his bow and saying, "Good evening, soh! Would you like your horoscope? This time of year is sometimes called Charyou Reap! You will see an old friend! A young lady thinks of you warmly!" And so on.

Jake had asked Roland again why he was spending so much time with Benny Slightman.

"Are you complaining?" Roland asked. "Don't like him anymore?"

"I like him fine, Roland, but if there's something I'm supposed to be doing besides jumping in the hay, teaching Oy to do somersaults, or seeing who can skip a flat rock on the river the most times, I think you ought to tell me what it is."

"There's nothing else," Roland said. Then, as an afterthought: "And get your sleep. Growing boys need plenty of sleep."

"Why am I out there?"

"Because it seems right to me that you should be," Roland said. "All I want is for you to keep your eyes open and tell me if you see something you don't like or don't understand."

"Anyway, kiddo, don't you see enough of us during the days?" Eddie asked him.

They were together during those next five days, and the days were long. The novelty of riding sai Overholser's horses wore off in a hurry. So did complaints of sore muscles and blistered butts. On one of these rides, as they approached the place where Andy would be waiting, Roland asked Susannah bluntly if she had considered abortion as a way of solving her problem.

"Well," she said, looking at him curiously from her horse, "I'm not going to tell you the thought never crossed my mind."

"Banish it," he said. "No abortion."

"Any particular reason why not?"

"Ka," said Roland.

"Kaka," Eddie replied promptly. This was an old joke, but the three of them laughed, and Roland was delighted to laugh with them. And with that, the subject was dropped. Roland could hardly believe it, but he was glad. The fact that Susannah seemed so little disposed to discuss Mia and the coming of the baby made him grateful indeed. He supposed there were things-quite a few of them-which she felt better off not knowing.

Still, she had never lacked for courage. Roland was sure the questions would have come sooner or later, but after five days of canvassing the town as a quartet (a quintet counting Oy, who always rode with Jake), Roland began sending her out to the Jaffords smallhold at midday to try her hand with the dish.

Eight days or so after their long palaver on the rectory porch-the one that had gone on until four in the morning- Susannah invited them out to the Jaffords smallhold to see her progress. "It's Zalia's idea," she said. "I guess she wants to know if I pass."

Roland knew he only had to ask Susannah herself if he wanted an answer to that question, but he was curious. When they arrived, they found the entire family gathered on the back porch, and several of Tian's neighbors, as well: Jorge Estrada and his wife, Diego Adams (in chaps), the Javiers. They looked like spectators at a Points practice. Zalman and Tia, the roont twins, stood to one side, goggling at all the company with wide eyes. Andy was also there, holding baby Aaron (who was sleeping) in his arms.

"Roland, if you wanted all this kept secret, guess what?" Eddie said.

Roland was not put out of countenance, although he realized now that his threat to the cowboys who'd seen sai Eisenhart throw the dish had been utterly useless. Country-folk talked, that was all. Whether in the borderlands or the baronies, gossip was ever the chief sport. And at the very least, he mused, those humpies will spread the news that Roland's a hard boy, strong commala, and not to be trifled with.

"It is what it is," he said. "The Calla-folken have known for donkey's years that the Sisters of Oriza throw the dish. If they know Susannah throws it, too-and well-maybe it's to the good."

Jake said, "I just hope she doesn't, you know, mess up."

There were respectful greetings for Roland, Eddie, and Jake as they mounted the porch. Andy told Jake a young lady was pining for him. Jake blushed and said he'd just as soon not know about stuff like that, if that did Andy all right.

"As you will, soh." Jake found himself studying the words and numbers stamped on Andy's midsection like a steel tattoo and wondering again if he was really in this world of robots and cowboys, or if it was all some sort of extraordinarily vivid dream. "I hope this baby will wake up soon, so I do. And cry! Because I know several soothing cradle-songs-"

"Hush up, ye creakun steel bandit!" Gran-pere said crossly, and after crying the old man's pardon (in his usual complacent, not-a-bit-sorry tone of voice), Andy did. Messenger, Many Other Functions, Jake thought. Is one of your other functions teasing folks, Andy, or is that just my imagination?

Susannah had gone into the house with Zalia. When they came out, Susannah was wearing not one reed pouch, but two. They hung to her hips on a pair of woven straps. There was another strap, too, Eddie saw, running around her waist and holding the pouches snug. Like holster tie-downs.

"That's quite the hookup, say thankya," Diego Adams remarked.

"Susannah thought it up," Zalia said as Susannah got into her wheelchair. "She calls it a docker's clutch."

It wasn't, Eddie thought, not quite, but it was close. He felt an admiring smile lift the corners of his mouth, and saw a similar one on Roland's. And Jake's. By God, even Oy appeared to be grinning.

"Will it draw water, that's what I wonder," Bucky Javier said. That such a question should even be asked, Eddie thought, only emphasized the difference between the gunslingers and the Calla-folken. Eddie and his mates had known from first look what the hookup was and how it would work. Javier, however, was a smallhold farmer, and as such, saw the world in a very different way.

You need us, Eddie thought toward the little cluster of men standing on the porch-the farmers in their dirty white pants, Adams in his chaps and manure-splattered shor'boots. Boy, do you ever.

Susannah wheeled to the front of the porch and folded her stumps beneath her so she appeared almost to be standing in her chair. Eddie knew how much this posture hurt her, but no discomfort showed on her face. Roland, meanwhile, was looking down into the pouches she wore. There were four dishes in each, plain things with no pattern on them. Practice-dishes.

Zalia walked across to the barn. Although Roland and Eddie had noted the blanket tacked up there as soon as they arrived, the others noticed it for the first time when Zalia pulled it down. Drawn in chalk on the barnboards was the outline of a man-or a manlike being-with a frozen grin on his face and the suggestion of a cloak fluttering out behind him. This wasn't work of the quality produced by the Tavery twins, nowhere near, but those on the porch recognized a Wolf when they saw one. The older children oohed softly. The Estradas and the Javiers applauded, but looked apprehensive even as they did so, like people who fear they may be whistling up the devil. Andy complimented the artist ("whoever she may be," he added archly), and Gran-pere told him again to shut his trap. Then he called out that the Wolves he'd seen were quite a spot bigger. His voice was shrill with excitement.

"Well, I drew it to man-size," Zalia said (she had actually drawn it to husband-size). "If the real thing turns out to make a bigger target, all to the good. Hear me, I beg." This last came out uncertainly, almost as a question.

Roland nodded. "We say thankya."

Zalia shot him a grateful look, then stepped away from the outline on the wall. Then she looked at Susannah. "When you will, lady."

For a moment Susannah only remained where she was, about sixty yards from the barn. Her hands lay between her breasts, the right covering the left. Her head was lowered. Her ka-mates knew exactly what was going on in that head: I aim with my eye, shoot with my hand, kill with my heart. Their own hearts went out to her, perhaps carried by Jake's touch or Eddie's love, encouraging her, wishing her well, sharing their excitement. Roland watched fiercely. Would one more dab hand with the dish turn things in their favor? Perhaps not. But he was what he was, and so was she, and he wished her true aim with every last bit of his will.

She raised her head. Looked at the shape chalked on the barn wall. Still her hands lay between her breasts. Then she cried out shrilly, as Margaret Eisenhart had cried out in the yard of the Rocking B, and Roland felt his hard-beating heart rise. In that moment he had a clear and beautiful memory of David, his hawk, folding his wings in a blue summer sky and dropping at his prey like a stone with eyes.

"Riza!"

Her hands dropped and became a blur. Only Roland, Eddie, and Jake were able to mark how they crossed at the waist, the right hand seizing a dish from the left pouch, the left hand seizing one from the right. Sai Eisenhart had thrown from the shoulder, sacrificing time in order to gain force and accuracy.

Susannah's arms crossed below her ribcage and just above the arms of her wheelchair, the dishes finishing their cocking arc at about the height of her shoulderblades. Then they flew, crisscrossing in midair a moment before thudding into the side of the barn.

Susannah's arms finished straight out before her; for a moment she looked like an impresario who has just introduced the featured act. Then they dropped and crossed, seizing two more dishes. She flung them, dipped again, and flung the third set. The first two were still quivering when the last two bit into the side of the barn, one high and one low.

For a moment there was utter silence in the Jaffordses' yard. Not even a bird called. The eight plates ran in a perfectly straight line from the throat of the chalked figure to what would have been its upper midsection. They were all two and a half to three inches apart, descending like buttons on a shirt. And she had thrown all eight in no more than three seconds.

"Do'ee mean to use the dish against the Wolves?" Bucky Javier asked in a queerly breathless voice. "Is that it?"

"Nothing's been decided," Roland said stolidly.

In a barely audible voice that held both shock and wonder, Deelie Estrada said: "But if that'd been a man, hear me, he'd be cutlets."

It was Gran-pere who had the final word, as perhaps gran-peres should: "Yer-bugger!"

SIX

On their way back out to the main road (Andy walked at a distance ahead of them, carrying the folded wheelchair and playing something bagpipey through his sound system), Susannah said musingly: "I may give up the gun altogether, Roland, and just concentrate on the dish. There's an elemental satisfaction to giving that scream and then throwing."

"You reminded me of my hawk," Roland admitted.

Susannah's teeth flashed white in a grin. "Ifelt like a hawk. Riza! O-Riza! Just saying the word puts me in a throwing mood."

To Jake's mind this brought some obscure memory of Gasher ("Yer old pal, Gasher," as the gentleman himself had been wont to say), and he shivered.

"Would you really give up the gun?" Roland asked. He didn't know if he was amused or aghast.

"Would you roll your own smokes if you could get tailor-mades?" she asked, and then, before he could answer: "No, not really. Yet the dish is a lovely weapon. When they come, I hope to throw two dozen. And bag my limit."

"Will there be a shortage of plates?" Eddie asked.

"Nope," she said. "There aren't very many fancy ones- like the one sai Eisenhart threw for you, Roland-but they've hundreds of practice-plates. Rosalita and Sarey Adams are sorting through them, culling out any that might fly crooked." She hesitated, lowered her voice. "They've all been out here, Roland, and although Sarey's brave as a lion and would stand fast against a tornado…"

"Hasn't got it, huh?" Eddie asked sympathetically.

"Not quite," Susannah agreed. "She's good, but not like the others. Nor does she have quite the same ferocity."

"I may have something else for her," Roland said.

"What would that be, sugar?"

"Escort duty, mayhap. We'll see how they shoot, day after tomorrow. A little competition always livens things up. Five o' the clock, Susannah, do they know?"

"Yes. Most of the Calla would turn up, if you allowed them."

This was discouraging… but he should have expected it. I've been too long out of the world of people, he thought. So I have.

"No one but the ladies and ourselves," Roland said firmly.

"If the Calla-folken saw the women throw well, it could swing a lot of people who are on the fence."

Roland shook his head. He didn't want them to know how well the women threw, that was very nearly the whole point. But that the town knew they were throwing… that might not be such a bad thing. "How good are they, Susannah? Tell me."

She thought about it, then smiled. "Killer aim," she said. "Every one."

"Can you teach them that crosshand throw?"

Susannah considered the question. You could teach anyone just about anything, given world enough and time, but they had neither. Only thirteen days left now, and by the day the Sisters of Oriza (including their newest member, Susannah of New York) met for the exhibition in Pere Callahan's back yard, there would be only a week and a half. The crosshand throw had come naturally to her, as everything about shooting had. But the others…

"Rosalita will learn it," she said at last. "Margaret Eisenhart could learn it, but she might get flustered at the wrong time. Zalia? No. Best she throw one plate at a time, always with her right hand. She's a little slower, but I guarantee every plate she throws will drink something's blood."

"Yeah," Eddie said. "Until a sneetch homes in on her and blows her out of her corset, that is."

Susannah ignored this. "We can hurt them, Roland. Thou knows we can."

Roland nodded. What he'd seen had encouraged him mightily, especially in light of what Eddie had told him. Susannah and Jake also knew Gran-pere's ancient secret now. And, speaking of Jake…

"You're very quiet today," Roland said to the boy. "Is everything all right?"

"I do fine, thankya," Jake said. He had been watching Andy. Thinking of how Andy had rocked the baby. Thinking that if Tian and Zalia and the other kids all died and Andy was left to raise Aaron, baby Aaron would probably die within six months. Die, or turn into the weirdest kid in the universe. Andy would diaper him, Andy would feed him all the correct stuff, Andy would change him when he needed changing and burp him if he needed burping, and there would be all sorts of cradle-songs. Each would be sung perfectly and none would be propelled by a mother's love. Or a father's. Andy was just Andy, Messenger Robot, Many Other Functions. Baby Aaron would be better off being raised by… well, by wolves.

This thought led him back to the night he and Benny had tented out (they hadn't done so since; the weather had turned chilly). The night he had seen Andy and Benny's Da' palavering. Then Benny's Da' had gone wading across the river. Headed east.

Headed in the direction of Thunderclap.

"Jake, are you sure you're okay?" Susannah asked.

"Yessum," Jake said, knowing this would probably make her laugh. It did, and Jake laughed with her, but he was still thinking of Benny's Da'. The spectacles Benny's Da' wore. Jake was pretty sure he was the only one in town who had them. Jake had asked him about that one day when the three of them had been riding in one of the Rocking B's two north fields, looking out strays. Benny's Da' had told him a story about trading a beautiful true-threaded colt for the specs-from one of the lake-mart boats it had been, back when Benny's sissa had been alive, Oriza bless her. He had done it even though all of the cowpokes-even Vaughn Eisenhart himself, do ya not see-had told him such spectacles never worked; they were no more useful than Andy's fortunes. But Ben Slightman had tried them on, and they had changed everything. All at once, for the first time since he'd been maybe seven, he'd been able to really see the world.

He had polished his specs on his shirt as they rode, held them up to the sky so that twin spots of light swam on his cheeks, then put them back on. "If I ever lose em or break em, I don't know what I'd do," he'd said. "I got along without such just fine for twenty years or more, but a person gets used to something better in one rip of a hurry."

Jake thought it was a good story. He was sure Susannah would have believed it (assuming the singularity of Slightman's spectacles had occurred to her in the first place). He had an idea Roland would have believed it, too. Slightman told it in just the right way: a man who still appreciated his good fortune and didn't mind letting folks know that he'd been right about something while quite a number of other people, his boss among them, had been wide of the mark. Even Eddie might have swallowed it. The only thing wrong with Slightman's story was that it wasn't true. Jake didn't know what the real deal was, his touch didn't go that deep, but he knew that much. And it worried him.

Probably nothing, you know. Probably he just got them in some way that wouldn't sound so good. For all you know, one of the Manni brought them back from some other world, and Benny's Da' stole them.

That was one possibility; if pressed, Jake could have come up with half a dozen more. He was an imaginative boy.

Still, when added to what he'd seen by the river, it worried him. What kind of business could Eisenhart's foreman have on the far side of the Whye? Jake didn't know. And still, each time he thought to raise this subject with Roland, something kept him quiet.

And after giving him a hard time about keeping secrets!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But-

But what, little trailhand?

But Benny, that was what. Benny was the problem. Or maybe it was Jake himself who was actually the problem. He'd never been much good at making friends, and now he had a good one. A real one. The thought of getting Benny's Da' in trouble made him feel sick to his stomach.

SEVEN

Two days later, at five o' the clock, Rosalita, Zalia, Margaret Eisenhart, Sarey Adams, and Susannah Dean gathered in the field just west of Rosa's neat privy. There were a lot of giggles and not a few bursts of nervous, shrieky laughter. Roland kept his distance, and instructed Eddie and Jake to do the same. Best to let them get it out of their systems.

Set against the rail fence, ten feet apart from each other, were stuffies with plump sharproot heads. Each head was wrapped in a gunnysack which had been tied to make it look like the hood of a cloak. At the foot of each guy were three baskets. One was filled with more sharproot. Another was filled with potatoes. The contents of the third had elicited groans and cries of protest. These three were filled with radishes. Roland told them to quit their mewling; he'd considered peas, he said. None of them (even Susannah) was entirely sure he was joking.

Callahan, today dressed in jeans and a stockman's vest of many pockets, ambled out onto the porch, where Roland sat smoking and waiting for the ladies to settle down. Jake and Eddie were playing draughts close by.

"Vaughn Eisenhart's out front," the Pere told Roland. "Says he'll go on down to Tooky's and have a beer, but not until he passes a word with'ee."

Roland sighed, got up, and walked through the house to the front. Eisenhart was sitting on the seat of a one-horse fly, shor'boots propped on the splashboard, looking moodily off toward Callahan's church.

"G'day to ya, Roland," he said.

Wayne Overholser had given Roland a cowboy's broad-brimmed hat some days before. He tipped it to the rancher and waited.

"I guess you'll be sending the feather soon," Eisenhart said. "Calling a meeting, if it please ya."

Roland allowed as how that was so. It was not the town's business to tell knights of Eld how to do their duty, but Roland would tell them what duty was to be done. That much he owed them.

"I want you to know that when the time comes, I'll touch it and send it on. And come the meeting, I'll say aye."

"Say thankya," Roland replied. He was, in fact, touched. Since joining with Jake, Eddie, and Susannah, it seemed his heart had grown. Sometimes he was sorry. Mostly he wasn't.

"Took won't do neither."

"No," Roland agreed. "As long as business is good, the Tooks of the world never touch the feather. Nor say aye."

"Overholser's with him."

This was a blow. Not an entirely unexpected one, but he'd hoped Overholser would come around. Roland had all the support he needed, however, and supposed Overholser knew it. If he was wise, the farmer would just sit and wait for it to be over, one way or the other. If he meddled, he would likely not see another year's crops into his barns.

"I wanted ye to know one thing," Eisenhart said. "I'm in with'ee because of my wife, and my wife's in with'ee because she's decided she wants to hunt. This is what all such things as the dish-throwing comes to in the end, a woman telling her man what'll be and what won't. It ain't the natural way. A man's meant to rule his woman. Except in the matter of the babbies, o'course."

"She gave up everything she was raised to when she took you to husband," Roland said. "Now it's your turn to give a little."

"Don't ye think I know that? But if you get her killed, Roland, you'll take my curse with you when ye leave the Calla. If'ee do. No matter how many children ye save."

Roland, who had been cursed before, nodded. "If ka wills, Vaughn, she'll come back to you."

"Aye. But remember what I said."

"I will."

Eisenhart slapped the reins on the horse's back and the fly began to roll.

EIGHT

Each woman halved a sharproot head at forty yards, fifty yards, and sixty.

"Hit the head as high up into the hood as you can get," Roland said. "Hitting them low will do no good."

"Armor, I suppose?" Rosalita asked.

"Aye," Roland said, although that was not the entire truth. He wouldn't tell them what he now understood to be the entire truth until they needed to know it.

Next came the taters. Sarey Adams got hers at forty yards, clipped it at fifty, and missed entirely at sixty; her dish sailed high. She uttered a curse that was far from ladylike, then walked head-down to the side of the privy. Here she sat to watch the rest of the competition. Roland went over and sat beside her. He saw a tear trickling from the corner of her left eye and down her wind-roughened cheek.

"I've let ye down, stranger. Say sorry."

Roland took her hand and squeezed it. "Nay, lady, nay. There'll be work for you. Just not in the same place as these others. And you may yet throw the dish."

She gave him a wan smile and nodded her thanks.

Eddie put more sharproot "heads" on the stuffy-guys, then a radish on top of each. The latter were all but concealed in the shadows thrown by the gunnysack hoods. "Good luck, girls," he said. "Better you than me." Then he stepped away.

"Start from ten yards this time!" Roland called.

At ten, they all hit. And at twenty. At thirty yards, Susannah threw her plate high, as Roland had instructed her to do. He wanted one of the Calla women to win this round. At forty yards, Zalia Jaffords hesitated too long, and the dish she flung chopped the sharproot head in two rather than the radish sitting on top.

"Fuck-commala!" she cried, then clapped her hands to her mouth and looked at Callahan, who was sitting on the back steps. That fellow only smiled and waved cheerfully, affecting deafness.

She stamped over to Eddie and Jake, blushing to the tips of her ears and furious. "Ye must tell him to give me another chance, say will ya please," she told Eddie. "I can do it, I know I can do it-"

Eddie put a hand on her arm, stemming the flood. "He knows it, too, Zee. You're in."

She looked at him with burning eyes, lips pressed so tightly together they were almost gone. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Eddie said. "You could pitch for the Mets, darlin."

Now it was down to Margaret and Rosalita. They both hit the radishes at fifty yards. To Jake, Eddie murmured: "Buddy, I would have told you that was impossible if I hadn't just seen it."

At sixty yards, Margaret Eisenhart missed cleanly. Rosalita raised her plate over her right shoulder-she was a lefty-hesitated, then screamed "Riza!" and threw. Sharp-eyed though he was, Roland wasn't entirely sure if the plate's edge clipped the side of the radish or if the wind toppled it over. In either case, Rosalita raised her fists over her head and shook them, laughing.

"Fair-day goose! Fair-day goose!" Margaret began calling. The others joined in. Soon even Callahan was chanting.

Roland went to Rosa and gave her a hug, brief but strong. As he did so he whispered in her ear that while he had no goose, he might be able to find a certain long-necked gander for her, come evening.

"Well," she said, smiling, "when we get older, we take our prizes where we find them. Don't we?"

Zalia glanced at Margaret. "What did he say to her? Did'ee kennit?"

Margaret Eisenhart was smiling. "Nothing you haven't heard yourself, I'm sure," she said.

NINE

Then the ladies were gone. So was the Pere, on some errand or other. Roland of Gilead sat on the bottom porch step, looking downhill toward the site of the competition so lately completed. When Susannah asked him if he was satisfied, he nodded. "Yes, I think all's well there. We have to hope it is, because time's closing now. Things will happen fast." The truth was that he had never experienced such a confluence of events… but since Susannah had admitted her pregnancy, he had calmed nevertheless.

You've recalled the truth of ka to your truant mind, he thought. And it happened because this woman showed a kind of bravery the rest of us couldn't quite muster up.

"Roland, will I be going back out to the Rocking B?" Jake asked.

Roland considered, then shrugged. "Do you want to?"

"Yes, but this time I want to take the Ruger." Jake's face pinked a little, but his voice remained steady. He had awakened with this idea, as if the dreamgod Roland called Nis had brought it to him in his sleep. "I'll put it at the bottom of my bedroll and wrap it in my extra shirt. No one needs to know it's there." He paused. "I don't want to show it off to Benny, if that's what you're thinking."

The idea had never crossed Roland's mind. But what was in Jake's mind? He posed the question, and Jake's answer was the sort one gives when one has charted the likely course of a discussion well in advance.

"Do you ask as my dinh?"

Roland opened his mouth to say yes, saw how closely Eddie and Susannah were watching him, and reconsidered. There was a difference between keeping secrets (as each of them had in his own way kept the secret of Susannah's pregnancy) and following what Eddie called "a hunch." The request under Jake's request was to be on a longer rope. Simple as that. And surely Jake had earned the right to a little more rope. This was not the same boy who had come into Mid-World shivering and terrified and nearly naked.

"Not as your dinh," he said. "As for the Ruger, you may take it anywhere, and at any time. Did you not bring it to the tet in the first place?"

"Stole it," Jake said in a low voice. He was staring at his knees.

"You took what you needed to survive," Susannah said. "There's a big difference. Listen, sugar-you're not planning to shoot anyone, are you?"

"Not planning to, no."

"Be careful," she said. "I don't know what you've got in your head, but you be careful."

"And whatever it is, you better get it settled in the next week or so," Eddie told him.

Jake nodded, then looked at Roland. "When are you planning to call the town meeting?"

"According to the robot, we have ten days left before the Wolves come. So…" Roland calculated briefly. "Town gathering in six days. Will that suit you?"

Jake nodded again.

"Are you sure you don't want to tell us what's on your mind?"

"Not unless you ask as dinh," Jake said. "It's probably nothing, Roland. Really."

Roland nodded dubiously and began rolling another smoke. Having fresh tobacco was wonderful. "Is there anything else? Because, if there isn't-"

"There is, actually," Eddie said.

"What?"

"I need to go to New York," Eddie said. He spoke casually, as if proposing no more than a trip to the mercantile to buy a pickle or a licorice stick, but his eyes were dancing with excitement. "And this time I'll have to go in the flesh. Which means using the ball more direcdy, I guess. Black Thirteen. I hope to hell you know how to do it, Roland."

"Why do you need to go to New York?" Roland asked. "This I do ask as dinh."

"Sure you do," Eddie said, "and I'll tell you. Because you're right about time getting short. And because the Wolves of the Calla aren't the only ones we have to worry about."

"You want to see how close to July fifteenth it's getting," Jake said. "Don't you?"

"Yeah," Eddie said. "We know from when we all went todash that time is going faster in that version of New York, 1977. Remember the date on the piece of The New York Times I found in the doorway?"

"June second," Susannah said.

"Right. We're also pretty sure that we can't double back in time in that world; it's later every time we go there. Right?"

Jake nodded emphatically. "Because that world's not like the others… unless maybe it was just being sent todash by Black Thirteen that made us feel that way?"

"I don't think so," Eddie said. "That little piece of Second Avenue between the vacant lot and maybe on up to Sixtieth is a very important place. I think it's a doorway. One big doorway."

Jake Chambers was looking more and more excited. "Not all the way up to Sixtieth. Not that far. Second Avenue between Forty-sixth and Fifty-fourth, that's what I think. On the day I left Piper, I felt something change when I got to Fifty-fourth Street.

It's those eight blocks. The stretch with the record store on it, and Chew Chew Mama, and The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. And the vacant lot, of course. That's the other end. It… I don't know…"

Eddie said, "Being there takes you into a different world. Some kind of key world. And I think that's why time always runs one way-"

Roland held up his hand. "Stop."

Eddie stopped, looking at Roland expectantly, smiling a little. Roland was not smiling. Some of his previous sense of well-being had passed away. Too much to do, gods damn it. And not enough time in which to do it.

"You want to see how near time has run to the day the agreement becomes null and void," he said. "Have I got that right?"

"You do."

"You don't need to go to New York physically to do that, Eddie. Todash would serve nicely."

"Todash would do fine to check the day and the month, sure, but there's more. We've been dumb about that vacant lot, you guys. I mean really dumb."

TEN

Eddie believed they could own the vacant lot without ever touching Susannah's inherited fortune; he thought Callahan's story showed quite clearly how it could be done. Not the rose; the rose was not to be owned (by them or anyone) but to be protected. And they could do it. Maybe.

Frightened or not, Calvin Tower had been waiting in that deserted laundrymat to save Pere Callahan's bacon. And frightened or not, Calvin Tower had refused-as of May 31st, 1977, anyway-to sell his last piece of real property to the Sombra Corporation. Eddie thought that Calvin Tower was, in the words of the song, holding out for a hero.

Eddie had also been thinking about the way Callahan had hidden his face in his hands the first time he mentioned Black Thirteen. He wanted it the hell out of his church… but so far he'd kept it anyway. Like the bookshop owner, the Pere had been holding out. How stupid they had been to assume Calvin Tower would ask millions for his lot! He wanted to be shed of it. But not until the right person came along. Or the right ka-tet.

"Suziella, you can't go because you're pregnant," Eddie said. "Jake, you can't go because you're a kid. All other questions aside, I'm pretty sure you couldn't sign the kind of contract I've been thinking about ever since Callahan told us his story. I could take you with me, but it sounds like you've got something you want to check into over here. Or am I wrong about that?"

"You're not wrong," Jake said. "But I'd almost go with you, anyway. This sounds really good."

Eddie smiled. "Almost only counts with grenados and horseshoes, kid. As for sending Roland, no offense, boss, but you're not all that suave in our world. You… um… lose something in the translation."

Susannah burst out laughing.

"How much are you thinking of offering him?" Jake asked. "I mean, it has to be something, doesn't it?"

"A buck," Eddie said. "I'll probably have to ask Tower to loan it to me, but-"

"No, we can do better than that," Jake said, looking serious. "I've got five or six dollars in my knapsack, I'm pretty sure." He grinned. "And we can offer him more, later on. When things kind of settle down on this side."

"If we're still alive," Susannah said, but she also looked excited. "You know what, Eddie? You just might be a genius."

"Balazar and his friends won't be happy if sai Tower sells us his lot," Roland said.

"Yeah, but maybe we can persuade Balazar to leave him alone," Eddie said. A grim little smile was playing around the corners of his mouth. "When it comes right down to it, Roland, Enrico Balazar's the kind of guy I wouldn't mind killing twice."

"When do you want to go?" Susannah asked him.

"The sooner the better," Eddie said. "For one thing, not knowing how late it is over there in New York is driving me nuts. Roland? What do you say?"

"I say tomorrow," Roland said. "We'll take the ball up to the cave, and then we'll see if you can go through the door to Calvin Tower's where and when. Your idea is a good one, Eddie, and I say thankya."

Jake said, "What if the ball sends you to the wrong place? The wrong version of 1977, or…" He hardly knew how to finish. He was remembering how thin everything had seemed when Black Thirteen had first taken them todash, and how endless darkness seemed to be waiting behind the painted surface realities around them. "… or someplace even farther?" he finished.

"In that case, I'll send back a postcard." Eddie said it with a shrug and a laugh, but for just a moment Jake saw how frightened he was. Susannah must have seen it, too, because she took Eddie's hand in both of hers and squeezed it.

"Hey, I'll be fine," Eddie said.

"You better be," Susannah replied. "You just better."

ONE

When Roland and Eddie entered Our Lady of Serenity the following morning, daylight was only a distant rumor on the northeast horizon. Eddie lit their way down the center aisle with a 'sener, his lips pressed tightly together. The thing they had come for was humming. It was a sleepy hum, but he hated the sound of it just the same. The church itself felt freaky. Empty, it seemed too big, somehow. Eddie kept expecting to see ghostly figures (or perhaps a complement of the vagrant dead) sitting in the pews and looking at them with otherworldly disapproval.

But the hum was worse.

When they reached the front, Roland opened his purse and took out the bowling bag which Jake had kept in his knapsack until yesterday. The gunslinger held it up for a moment and they could both read what was printed on the side: NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES.

"Not a word from now until I tell you it's all right," Roland said. "Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Roland pressed his thumb into the groove between two of the floorboards and the hidey-hole in the preacher's cove sprang open. He lifted the top aside. Eddie had once seen a movie on TV about guys disposing of live explosives during the London Blitz-UXB, it had been called-and Roland's movements now recalled that film strongly to his mind. And why not? If they were right about what was in this hiding place-and Eddie knew they were-then it was an unexploded bomb.

Roland folded back the white linen surplice, exposing the box. The hum rose. Eddie's breath stopped in his throat. He felt the skin all over his body grow cold. Somewhere close, a monster of nearly unimaginable malevolence had half-opened one sleeping eye.

The hum dropped back to its former sleepy pitch and Eddie breathed again.

Roland handed him the bowling bag, motioning for Eddie to hold it open. With misgivings (part of him wanted to whisper in Roland's ear that they should forget the whole thing), Eddie did as he was bidden. Roland lifted the box out, and once again the hum rose. In the rich, if limited, glow of the 'sener, Eddie could see sweat on the gunslinger's brow. He could feel it on his own. If Black Thirteen awoke and pitched them out into some black limbo…

I won't go. I'll fight to stay with Susannah.

Of course he would. But he was still relieved when Roland slipped the elaborately carved ghostwood box into the queer metallic bag they'd found in the vacant lot. The hum didn't disappear entirely, but subsided to a barely audible drone. And when Roland gently pulled the drawstring running around the top of the bag, closing its mouth, the drone became a distant whisper. It was like listening to a seashell.

Eddie sketched the sign of the cross in front of himself. Smiling faintly, Roland did the same.

Outside the church, the northeast horizon had brightened appreciably - there would be real daylight after all, it seemed.

"Roland."

The gunslinger turned toward him, eyebrows raised. His left fist was closed around the bag's throat; he was apparently not willing to trust the weight of the box to the bag's drawstring, stout as it looked.

"If we were todash when we found that bag, how could we have picked it up?"

Roland considered this. Then he said, "Perhaps the bag is todash, too."

"Still?"

Roland nodded. "Yes, I think so. Still."

"Oh." Eddie thought about it. "That's spooky."

"Changing your mind about revisiting New York, Eddie?" Eddie shook his head. He was scared, though. Probably more scared than he'd been at any time since standing up in the aisle of the Barony Coach to riddle Blaine.

TWO

By the time they were halfway along the path leading to the Doorway Cave (It's upsy, Henchick had said, and so it had been, and so it was), it was easily ten o' the clock and remarkably warm. Eddie stopped, wiped the back of his neck with his bandanna, and looked out over the twisting arroyos to the north. Here and there he could see black, gaping holes and asked Roland if they were the garnet mines. The gunslinger told him they were. "

"And which one have you got in mind for the kiddies? Can we see it from here?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." Roland drew the single gun he was wearing and pointed it. "Look over the sight."

Eddie did and saw a deep draw which made the shape of a jagged double S. It was filled to the top with velvety shadows; he guessed there might be only half an hour or so at midday when the sun reached the bottom. Farther to the north, it appeared to dead-end against a massive rock-face. He supposed the mine entrance was there, but it was too dark to make out. To the southeast this arroyo opened on a dirt track that wound its way back to East Road. Beyond East Road were fields sloping down to fading but still green plots of rice. Beyond the rice was the river.

"Makes me think of the story you told us," Eddie said. "Eye-bolt Canyon."

"Of course it does."

"No thinny to do the dirty work, though."

"No," Roland agreed. "No thinny."

"Tell me the truth: Are you really going to stick this town's kids in a mine at the end of a dead-end arroyo?"

"No."

"The folken think you… that we mean to do that. Even the dish-throwing ladies think that."

"I know they do," Roland said. "I want them to."

"Why?"

"Because I don't believe there's anything supernatural about the way the Wolves find the children. After hearing Gran-pere Jaffords's story, I don't think there's anything supernatural about the Wolves, for that matter. No, there's a rat in this particular corn-crib. Someone who goes squealing to the powers that be in Thunderclap."

"Someone different each time, you mean. Each twenty-three or twenty-four years."

"Yes."

"Who'd do that?" Eddie asked. "Who could do that?"

"I'm not sure, but I have an idea."

"Took? Kind of a handed-down thing, from father to son?"

"If you're rested, Eddie, I think we'd better press on."

"Overholser? Maybe that guy Telford, the one who looks like a TV cowboy?"

Roland walked past him without speaking, his new shor'boots gritting on the scattered pebbles and rock-splinters. From his good left hand, the pink bag swung back and forth. The thing inside was still whispering its unpleasant secrets.

"Chatty as ever, good for you," Eddie said, and followed him.

THREE

The first voice which arose from the depths of the cave belonged to the great sage and eminent junkie.

"Oh, wookit the wittle sissy!" Henry moaned. To Eddie, he sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge's dead partner in A Christmas Carol, funny and scary at the same time. "Does the wittle sissy think he's going back to Noo-Ork? You'll go a lot farther than that if you try it, bro. Better hunker where you are…just do your little carvings… be a good little homo…" The dead brother laughed. The live one shivered.

"Eddie?" Roland asked.

"Listen to your brother, Eddie!" his mother cried from the cave's dark and sloping throat. On the rock floor, scatters of small bones gleamed. "He gave up his life for you, his whole life, the least you could do is listen to him!"

"Eddie, are you all right?"

Now came the voice of Csaba Drabnik, known in Eddie's crowd as the Mad Fuckin Hungarian. Csaba was telling Eddie to give him a cigarette or he'd pull Eddie's fuckin pants down. Eddie tore his attention away from this frightening but fascinating gabble with an effort.

"Yeah," he said. "I guess so."

"The voices are coming from your own head. The cave finds them and amplifies them somehow. Sends them on. It's a little upsetting, I know, but it's meaningless."

"Why'd you let em kill me, bro?" Henry sobbed. "I kept thinking you'd come, but you never did!"

"Meaningless," Eddie said. "Okay, got it. What do we do now?"

"According to both stories I've heard of this place-Callahan's and Henchick's-the door will open when I open the box."

Eddie laughed nervously. "I don't even want you to take the box out of the bag, how's that for chickenshit?"

"If you've changed your mind…"

Eddie was shaking his head. "No. I want to go through with it." He flashed a sudden, bright grin. "You're not worried about me scoring, are you? Finding the man and getting high?"

From deep in the cave, Henry exulted, "It's China White, bro! Them niggers sell the best!"

"Not at all," Roland said. "There are plenty of things I am worried about, but you returning to your old habits isn't one of them."

"Good." Eddie stepped a little farther into the cave, looking at the free-standing door. Except for the hieroglyphics on the front and the crystal knob with the rose etched on it, this one looked exactly like the ones on the beach. "If you go around-?"

"If you go around, the door's gone," Roland said. "There is a hell of a drop-off, though… all the way to Na'ar, for all I know. I'd mind that, if I were you."

"Good advice, and Fast Eddie says thankya." He tried the crystal doorknob and found it wouldn't budge in either direction. He had expected that, too. He stepped back.

Roland said, "You need to think of New York. Of Second Avenue in particular, I think. And of the time. The year of nineteen and seven-seven."

"How do you think of a year?"

When Roland spoke, his voice betrayed a touch of impatience. "Think of how it was on the day you and Jake followed Jake's earlier self, I suppose."

Eddie started to say that was the wrong day, it was too early, then closed his mouth. If they were right about the rules, he couldn't go back to that day, not todash, not in the flesh, either. If they were right, time over there was somehow hooked to time over here, only running a little faster. If they were right about the rules… if there were rules…

Well, why don't you just go and see?

"Eddie? Do you want me to try hypnotizing you?" Roland had drawn a shell from his gunbelt. "It can make you see the past more clearly."

"No. I think I better do this straight and wide-awake."

Eddie opened and closed his hands several times, taking and releasing deep breaths as he did so. His heart wasn't running particularly fast-was going slow, if anything-but each beat seemed to shiver through his entire body. Christ, all this would have been so much easier if there were just some controls you could set, like in Professor Peabody's Wayback Machine or that movie about the Morlocks!

"Hey, do I look all right?" he asked Roland. "I mean, if I land on Second Avenue at high noon, how much attention am I going to attract?"

"If you appear in front of people," Roland said, "probably quite a lot. I'd advise you to ignore anyone who wants to palaver with you on the subject and vacate the area immediately."

"That much I know. I meant how do I look clotheswise?"

Roland gave a small shrug. "I don't know, Eddie. It's your city, not mine."

Eddie could have demurred. Brooklyn was his city. Had been, anyway. As a rule he hadn't gone into Manhattan from one month to the next, thought of it almost as another country. Still, he supposed he knew what Roland meant. He inventoried himself and saw a plain flannel shirt with horn buttons above dark-blue jeans with burnished nickel rivets instead of copper ones, and a button-up fly. (Eddie had seen zippers in Lud, but none since.) He reckoned he would pass for normal on the street. New York normal, at least. Anyone who gave him a second look would think cafe waiter/artist-wannabe playing hippie on his day off. He didn't think most people would even bother with the first look, and that was absolutely to the good. But there was one thing he could add-

"Have you got a piece of rawhide?" he asked Roland.

From deep in the cave, the voice of Mr. Tubther, his fifth-grade teacher, cried out with lugubrious intensity. "You had potential! You were a wonderful student, and look at what you turned into! Why did you let your brother spoil you?"

To which Henry replied, in sobbing outrage: "He let me die! He killed me!"

Roland swung his purse off his shoulder, put it on the floor at the mouth of the cave beside the pink bag, opened it, rummaged through it. Eddie had no idea how many things were in there; he only knew he'd never seen the bottom of it. At last the gunslinger found what Eddie had asked for and held it out.

While Eddie tied back his hair with the hank of rawhide (he thought it finished off the artistic-hippie look quite nicely), Roland took out what he called his swag-bag, opened it, and began to empty out its contents. There was the partially depleted sack of tobacco Callahan had given him, several kinds of coin and currency, a sewing kit, the mended cup he had turned into a rough compass not far from Shardik's clearing, an old scrap of map, and the newer one the Tavery twins had drawn. When the bag was empty, he took the big revolver with the sandalwood grip from the holster on his left hip. He rolled the cylinder, checked the loads, nodded, and snapped the cylinder back into place. Then he put the gun into the swag-bag, yanked the lacings tight, and tied them in a clove hitch that would come loose at a single pull. He held the bag out to Eddie by the worn strap.

At first Eddie didn't want to take it. "Nah, man, that's yours."

"These last weeks you've worn it as much as I have. Probably more."

"Yeah, but this is New York we're talking about, Roland. In New York, everybody steals."

"They won't steal from you. Take the gun."

Eddie looked into Roland's eyes for a moment, then took the swag-bag and slung the strap over his shoulder. "You've got a feeling."

"A hunch, yes."

"Ka at work?"

Roland shrugged. "It's always at work."

"All right," Eddie said. "And Roland-if I don't make it back, take care of Suze."

"Your job is to make sure I don't have to."

No, Eddie thought. My job is to protect the rose.

He turned to the door. He had a thousand more questions, but Roland was right, the time to ask them was done.

"Eddie, if you really don't want to-"

"No," he said. "I do want to." He raised his left hand and gave a thumbs-up. "When you see me do that, open the box."

"All right."

Roland speaking from behind him. Because now it was just Eddie and the door. The door with unfound written on it in some strange and lovely language. Once he'd read a novel called The Door Into Summer, by… who? One of the science-fiction guys he was always dragging home from the library, one of his old reliables, perfect for the long afternoons of summer vacation. Murray Leinster, Paul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison… Robert Heinlein. He thought it was Heinlein who'd written The Door Into Summer. Henry always ragging him about the books he brought home, calling him the wittle sissy, the wittle bookworm, asking him if he could read and jerk off at the same time, wanting to know how he could sit fuckin still for so long with his nose stuck in some made-up piece of shit about rockets and time machines. Henry older than him. Henry covered with pimples that were always shiny with Noxema and Stri-Dex. Henry getting ready to go into the Army. Eddie younger. Eddie bringing books home from the library. Eddie thirteen years old, almost the age Jake is now. It's 1977 and he's thirteen and on Second Avenue and the taxis are shiny yellow in the sun. A black man wearing Walkman earphones is walking past Chew Chew Mama's, Eddie can see him, Eddie knows the black man is listening to Elton John singing- what else?-"Someone Saved My Life Tonight." The sidewalk is crowded. It's late afternoon and people are going home after another day in the steel arroyos of Calla New York, where they grow money instead of rice, can ya say prime rate. Women looking amiably weird in expensive business suits and sneakers; their high heels are in their gunna because the workday is done and they're going home. Everyone seems to be smiling because the light is so bright and the air is so warm, it's summer in the city and somewhere there's the sound of a jack hammer, like on that old Lovin Spoonful song. Before him is a door into the summer of '77, the cabbies are getting a buck and a quarter on the drop and thirty cents every fifth of a mile thereafter, it was less before and it'll be more after but this is now, the dancing point of now. The space shuttle with the teacher on board hasn't blown up. John Lennon is still alive, although he won't be much longer if he doesn't stop messing with that wicked heroin, that China White. As for Eddie Dean, Edward Cantor Dean, he knows nothing about heroin. A few cigarettes are his only vice (other than trying to jack off, at which he will not be successful for almost another year). He's thirteen. It's 1977 and he has exactly four hairs on his chest, he counts them religiously each morning, hoping for big number five. It's the summer after the Summer of the Tall Ships. It's a late afternoon in the month of June and he can hear a happy tune. The tune is coming from the speakers over the doorway of the Tower of Power record shop, it's Mungo Jerry singing "In the Summertime," and-

Suddenly it was all real to him, or as real as he thought he needed it to be. Eddie raised his left hand and popped up his thumb: let's go. Behind him, Roland had sat down and eased the box out of the pink bag. And when Eddie gave him the thumbs-up, the gunslinger opened the box.

Eddie's ears were immediately assaulted by a sweetly dissonant jangle of chimes. His eyes began to water. In front of him, the free-standing door clicked open and the cave was suddenly illuminated by strong sunlight. There was the sound of beeping horns and the rat-a-tat-tat of a jackhammer. Not so long ago he had wanted a door like this so badly that he'd almost killed Roland to get it. And now that he had it, he was scared to death.

The todash chimes felt as if they were tearing his head apart. If he listened to that for long, he'd go insane. Go if you're going, he thought.

He stepped forward, through his gushing eyes seeing three hands reach out and grasp four doorknobs. He pulled the door toward him and golden late-day sunlight dazzled his eyes. He could smell gasoline and hot city air and someone's aftershave.

Hardly able to see anything, Eddie stepped through the unfound door and into the summer of a world from which he was now fan-gon, the exiled one.

FOUR

It was Second Avenue, all right; here was the Blimpie's, and from behind him came the cheery sound of that Mungo Jerry song with the Caribbean beat. People moved around him in a flood-uptown, downtown, all around the town. They paid no attention to Eddie, partly because most of them were only concentrating on getting out of town at the end of another day, mostly because in New York, not noticing other people was a way of life.

Eddie shrugged his right shoulder, settling the strap of Roland's swag-bag there more firmly, then looked behind him. The door back to Calla Bryn Sturgis was there. He could see Roland sitting at the mouth of the cave with the box open on his lap.

Those fucking chimes must be driving him crazy, Eddie thought. And then, as he watched, he saw the gunslinger remove a couple of bullets from his gunbelt and stick them in his ears. Eddie grinned. Good move, man. At least it had helped to block out the warble of the thinny back on 1-70. Whether it worked now or whether it didn't, Roland was on his own. Eddie had things to do.

He turned slowly on his little spot of the sidewalk, then looked over his shoulder again to verify the door had turned with him. It had. If it was like the other ones, it would now follow him everywhere he went. Even if it didn't, Eddie didn't foresee a problem; he wasn't planning on going far. He noticed something else, as well: that sense of darkness lurking behind everything was gone. Because he was really here, he supposed, and not just todash. If there were vagrant dead lurking in the vicinity, he wouldn't be able to see them.

Once more shrugging the swag-bag's strap further up on his shoulder, Eddie set off for The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

FIVE

People moved aside for him as he walked, but that wasn't quite enough to prove he was really here; people did that when you were todash, too. At last Eddie provoked an actual collision with a young guy toting not one briefcase but two -a Big Coffin Hunter of the business world if Eddie had ever seen one.

"Hey, watch where you're going!" Mr. Businessman squawked when their shoulders collided.

"Sorry, man, sorry," Eddie said. He was here, all right. "Say, could you tell me what day-"

But Mr. Businessman was already gone, chasing the coronary he'd probably catch up to around the age of forty-five or fifty, from the look of him. Eddie remembered the punchline of an old New York joke: "Pardon me, sir, can you tell me how to get to City Hall, or should I just go fuck myself?" He burst out laughing, couldn't help it.

Once he had himself back under control, he got moving again. On the corner of Second and Fifty-fourth, he saw a man looking into a shop window at a display of shoes and boots. This guy was also wearing a suit, but looked considerably more relaxed than the one Eddie had bumped into. Also he was carrying only a single briefcase, which Eddie took to be a good omen.

"Cry your pardon," Eddie said, "but could you tell me what day it is?"

"Thursday," the window-shopper said. "The twenty-third of June."

"1977?"

The window-shopper gave Eddie a little half-smile, both quizzical and cynical, plus a raised eyebrow. "1977, that's correct. Won't be 1978 for… gee, another six months. Think of that."

Eddie nodded. "Thankee-sai."

"Nothing," Eddie said, and hurried on.

Only three weeks to July fifteenth, give or take, he thought. That's cutting it too goddam close for comfort.

Yes, but if he could persuade Calvin Tower to sell him the lot today, the whole question of time would be moot. Once, a long time ago, Eddie's brother had boasted to some of his friends that his little bro could talk the devil into setting himself on fire, if he really set his mind to it. Eddie hoped he still had some of that persuasiveness. Do a little deal with Calvin Tower, invest in some real estate, then maybe take a half-hour time-out and actually enjoy that New York groove a little bit. Celebrate. Maybe get a chocolate egg-cream, or-

The run of his thoughts broke off and he stopped so suddenly that someone bumped into him and then swore. Eddie barely felt the bump or heard the curse. The dark-gray Lincoln Town Car was parked up there again-not in front of the fire hydrant this time, but a couple of doors down.

Balazar's Town Car.

Eddie started walking again. He was suddenly glad Roland had talked him into taking one of his revolvers. And that the gun was fully loaded.

SIX

The chalkboard was back in the window (today's special was a New England Boiled Dinner consisting of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Frost-for dessert, your choice of Mary McCarthy or Grace Metalious), but the sign hanging in the door read sorry we're closed. According to the digital bank-clock up the street from Tower of Power Records, it was 3:14 p.m. Who shut up shop at quarter past three on a weekday afternoon?

Someone with a special customer, Eddie reckoned. That was who.

He cupped his hands to the sides of his face and looked into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. He saw the small round display table with the children's books on it. To the right was the counter that looked as if it might have been niched from a turn-of-the-century soda fountain, only today no one was sitting there, not even Aaron Deepneau. The cash register was likewise unattended, although Eddie could read the words on the orange tab sticking up in its window: no sale.

Place was empty. Calvin Tower had been called away, maybe there'd been a family emergency-

He's got an emergency, all right, the gunslinger's cold voice spoke up in Eddie's head. It came in that gray auto-carriage. And look again at the counter, Eddie. Only this time why don't you actually use your eyes instead of just letting the light pour through them?

Sometimes he thought in the voices of other people. He guessed lots of people did that-it was a way of changing perspective a little, seeing stuff from another angle. But this didn't feel like that kind of pretending. This felt like old long, tall, and ugly actually talking to him inside his head.

Eddie looked at the counter again. This time he saw the strew of plastic chessmen on the marble, and the overturned coffee cup. This time he saw the spectacles lying on the floor between two of the stools, one of the lenses cracked.

He felt the first pulse of anger deep in the middle of his head. It was dull, but if past experience was any indicator, the pulses were apt to come faster and harder, growing sharper as they did. Eventually they would blot out conscious thought, and God help anyone who wandered within range of Roland's gun when that happened. He had once asked Roland if this happened to him, and Roland had replied, It happens to all of us. When Eddie had shaken his head and responded that he wasn't like Roland-not him, not Suze, not Jake-the gunslinger had said nothing.

Tower and his special customers were out back, he thought, in that combination storeroom and office. And this time talking probably wasn't what they had in mind. Eddie had an idea this was a little refresher course, Balazar's gentlemen reminding Mr. Tower that the fifteenth of July was coming, reminding Mr. Tower of what the most prudent decision would be once it came.

When the word gentlemen crossed Eddie's mind, it brought another pulse of anger with it. That was quite a word for guys who'd break a fat and harmless bookstore owner's glasses, then take him out back and terrorize him. Gentlemen! Fuck-commala!

He tried the bookshop door. It was locked, but the lock wasn't such of a much; the door rattled in its jamb like a loose tooth. Standing there in the recessed doorway, looking (he hoped) like a fellow who was especially interested in some book he'd glimpsed inside, Eddie began to increase his pressure on the lock, first using just his hand on the knob, then leaning his shoulder against the door in a way he hoped would look casual.

Chances are ninety-four in a hundred that no one's looking at you, anyway. This is New York, right? Can you tell me how to get to City Hall or should I just go fuck myself?

He pushed harder. He was still a good way from exerting maximum pressure when there was a snap and the door swung inward. Eddie entered without hesitation, as if he had every right in the world to be there, then closed the door again. It wouldn't latch. He took a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas off the children's table, ripped out the last page (Never liked the way this one ended, anyway, he thought), folded it three times, and stuck it into the crack between the door and the jamb. Good enough to keep it closed. Then he looked around.

The place was empty, and now, with the sun behind the skyscrapers of the West Side, shadowy. No sound-

Yes. Yes, there was. A muffled cry from the back of the shop. Caution, gentlemen at work, Eddie thought, and felt another pulse of anger. This one was sharper.

He yanked the tie on Roland's swag-bag, then walked toward the door at the back, the one marked employees only. Before he got there, he had to skirt an untidy heap of paperbacks and an overturned display rack, the old-fashioned drugstore kind that turned around and around. Calvin Tower had grabbed at it as Balazar's gents hustled him toward the storage area. Eddie hadn't seen it happen, didn't need to.

The door at the back wasn't locked. Eddie took Roland's revolver out of the swag-bag and set the bag itself aside so it wouldn't get in his way at a crucial moment. He eased the storage-room door open inch by inch, reminding himself of where Tower's desk was. If they saw him he'd charge, screaming at the top of his lungs. According to Roland, you always screamed at the top of your lungs when and if you were discovered. You might startle your enemy for a second or two, and sometimes a second or two made all the difference in the world.

This time there was no need for screaming or for charging. The men he was looking for were in the office area, their shadows once more climbing high and grotesque on the wall behind them. Tower was sitting in his office chair, but the chair was no longer behind the desk. It had been pushed into the space between two of the three filing cabinets. Without his glasses, his pleasant face looked naked. His two visitors were facing him, which meant their backs were to Eddie. Tower could have seen him, but Tower was looking up at Jack Andolini and George Biondi, concentrating on them alone. At the sight of the man's naked terror, another of those pulses went through Eddie's head.

There was the tang of gasoline in the air, a smell which Eddie guessed would frighten even the most stout-hearted shop owner, especially one presiding over an empire of paper. Beside the taller of the two men-Andolini-was a glass-fronted bookcase about five feet high. The door was swung open. Inside were four or five shelves of books, all the volumes wrapped in what looked like clear plastic dust-covers. Andolini was holding up one of them in a way that made him look absurdly like a TV pitchman. The shorter man-Biondi-was holding up a glass jar full of amber liquid in much the same way. Not much question about what it was.

"Please, Mr. Andolini," Tower said. He spoke in a humble, shaken voice. "Please, that's a very valuable book."

"Of course it is," Andolini said. "All the ones in the case are valuable. I understand you've got a signed copy of Ulysses that's worth twenty-six thousand dollars."

"What's that about, Jack?" George Biondi asked. He sounded awed. "What kind of book's worth twenty-six large?"

"I don't know," Andolini said. "Why don't you tell us, Mr. Tower? Or can I call you Cal?"

"My Ulysses is in a safe-deposit box," Tower said. "It's not for sale."

"But these are," Andolini said. "Aren't they? And I see the number 7500 on the flyleaf of this one in pencil. No twenty-six grand, but still the price of a new car. So here's what I'm going to do, Cal. Are you listening?"

Eddie was moving closer, and although he strove to be quiet, he made no effort whatever to conceal himself. And still none of them saw him. Had he been this stupid when he'd been of this world? This vulnerable to what was not even an ambush, properly speaking? He supposed he had been, and knew it was no wonder Roland had at first held him in contempt.

"I… I'm listening."

"You've got something Mr. Balazar wants as badly as you want your copy of Ulysses. And although these books in the glass cabinet are technically for sale, I bet you sell damned few of them, because you just… can't… bear… to part with them. The way you can't bear to part with that vacant lot. So here's what's going to happen. George is going to pour gasoline over this book with 7500 on it, and I'm going to light it on fire. Then I'm going to take another book out of your little case of treasures, and I'm going to ask you for a verbal commitment to sell that lot to the Sombra Corporation at high noon on July fifteenth. Got that?"

"If you give me that verbal commitment, this meeting will come to an end. If you don't give me that verbal commitment, I'm going to burn the second book. Then a third. Then a fourth. After four, sir, I believe my associate here is apt to lose patience."

"You're fucking A," George Biondi said. Eddie was now almost close enough to reach out and touch Big Nose, and still they didn't see him.

"At that point I think we'll just pour gasoline inside your little glass cabinet and set all your valuable books on f-"

Movement at last snagged Jack Andolini's eye. He looked beyond his partner's left shoulder and saw a young man with hazel eyes looking out of a deeply tanned face. The man was holding what looked like the world's oldest, biggest prop revolver. Had to be a prop.

"Who the fuck're-" Jack began.

Before he could get any further, Eddie Dean's face lit up with happiness and good cheer, a look that vaulted him way past handsome and into the land of beauty. "George!" he cried. It was the tone of one greeting his oldest, fondest friend after a long absence. "George Biondi! Man, you still got the biggest beak on this side of the Hudson! Good to see you, man!"

There is a certain hardwiring in the human animal that makes us respond to strangers who call us by name. When the summoning call is affectionate, we seem almost compelled to respond in kind. In spite of the situation they were in back here, George "Big Nose" Biondi turned, with the beginning of a grin, toward the voice that had hailed him with such cheerful familiarity. That grin was in fact still blooming when Eddie struck him savagely with the butt of Roland's gun. Andolini's eyes were sharp, but he saw little more than a blur as the butt came down three times, the first blow between Biondi's eyes, the second above his right eye, the third into the hollow of his right temple. The first two blows provoked hollow thudding sounds. The last one yielded a soft, sickening smack. Biondi went down like a sack of mail, eyes rolling up to show the whites, lips puckering in a restless way that made him look like a baby who wanted to nurse. The jar tumbled out of his relaxing hand, hit the cement floor, shattered. The smell of gasoline was suddenly much stronger, rich and cloying.

Eddie gave Biondi's partner no time to react. While Big Nose was still twitching on the floor in the spilled gas and broken glass, Eddie was on Andolini, forcing him backward.

SEVEN

For Calvin Tower (who had begun life as Calvin Toren), there was no immediate sense of relief, no Thank God I'm saved feeling. His first thought was They're bad; this new one is worse.

In the dim light of the storage room, the newcomer seemed to merge with his own leaping shadow and become an apparition ten feet tall. One with burning eyeballs starting from their sockets and a mouth pulled down to reveal jaws lined with glaring white teeth that almost looked like fangs. In one hand was a pistol that appeared to be the size of a blunderbuss, the kind of weapon referred to in seventeenth-century tales of adventure as a machine. He grabbed Andolini by the top of his shirt and the lapel of his sport-coat and threw him against the wall. The hoodlum's hip struck the glass case and it toppled over. Tower gave a cry of dismay to which neither of the two men paid the slightest attention.

Balazar's man tried to wriggle away to his left. The new one, the snarling man with his black hair tied back behind him, let him get going, then tripped him and went down on top of him, one knee on the hoodlum's chest. He shoved the muzzle of the blunderbuss, the machine, into the soft shelf under the hoodlum's chin. The hoodlum twisted his head, trying to get rid of it. The new one only dug it in deeper.

In a choked voice that made him sound like a cartoon duck, Balazar's torpedo said, "Don't make me laugh, slick-that ain't no real gun."

The new one-the one who had seemed to merge with his own shadow and become as tall as a giant-pulled his machine out from under the hoodlum's chin, cocked it with his thumb, and pointed it deep into the storage area. Tower opened his mouth to say something, God knew what, but before he could utter a word there was a deafening crash, the sound of a mortar shell going off five feet from some hapless G.I.'s foxhole. Bright yellow flame shot from the machine's muzzle. A moment later, the barrel was back under the hoodlum's chin.

"What do you think now, Jack?" the new one panted. "Still think it's a fake? Tell you whatI think: the next time I pull this trigger, your brains are going all the way to Hoboken."

EIGHT

Eddie saw fear in Jack Andolini's eyes, but no panic. This didn't surprise him. It had been Jack Andolini who'd collared him after the cocaine mule-delivery from Nassau had gone wrong. This version of him was younger-ten years younger-but no prettier. Andolini, once dubbed Old Double-Ugly by the great sage and eminent junkie Henry Dean, had a bulging caveman's forehead and a jutting Alley Oop jaw to match. His hands were so huge they looked like caricatures. Hair sprouted from the knuckles. He looked like Old Double-Stupid as well as Old Double-Ugly, but he was far from dumb. Dummies didn't work their way up to become the second-in-command to guys like Enrico Balazar. And while Jack might not be that yet in this when, he would be by 1986, when Eddie would come flying back into JFK with about two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Bolivian marching-powder under his shirt. In that world, that where and when, Andolini had become Il Roche's field-marshal. In this one, Eddie thought there was a very good chance he was going to take early retirement. From everything. Unless, that was, he played it perfectly.

Eddie shoved the barrel of the pistol deeper under Andolini's chin. The smell of gas and gunpowder was strong in the air, for the time being overwhelming the smell of books. Somewhere in the shadows there was an angry hiss from Sergio, the bookstore cat. Sergio apparently didn't approve of loud noises in his domain.

Andolini winced and twisted his head to the left. "Don't, man… that thing's hot!"

"Not as hot as where you'll be five minutes from now," Eddie said. "Unless you listen to me, Jack. Your chances of getting out of this are slim, but not quite none. Will you listen?"

"I don't know you. How do you know us?"

Eddie took the gun out from beneath Old Double-Ugly's chin and saw a red circle where the barrel of Roland's revolver had pressed. Suppose I told you that it's your ka to meet me again, ten years from now? And to be eaten by lobstrosities? That they'll start with the feet inside your Gucci loafers and work their way up? Andolini wouldn't believe him, of course, any more than he'd believed Roland's big old revolver would work until Eddie had demonstrated the truth. And along this track of possibility-on this level of the Tower-Andolini might not be eaten by lobstrosities. Because this world was different from all the others. This was Level Nineteen of the Dark Tower. Eddie felt it. Later he would ruminate on it, but not now. Now the very act of thinking was difficult. What he wanted right now was to kill both of these men, then head over to Brooklyn and tune up on the rest of Balazar's tet. Eddie tapped the barrel of the revolver against one of Andolini's jutting cheekbones. He had to restrain himself from really going to work on that ugly mug, and Andolini saw it. He blinked and wet his lips. Eddie's knee was still on his chest. Eddie could feel it going up and down like a bellows.

"You didn't answer my question," Eddie said. "What you did instead was ask a question of your own. The next time you do that, Jack, I'm going to use the barrel of this gun to break your face. Then I'll shoot out one of your kneecaps, turn you into a jackhopper for the rest of your life. I can shoot off a good many parts of you and still leave you able to talk. And don't play dumb with me. You're not dumb-except maybe in your choice of employer-and I know it. So let me ask you again: Will you listen to me?"

"What choice do I have?"

Moving with that same blurry, spooky speed, Eddie swept Roland's gun across Andolini's face. There was a sharp crack as his cheekbone snapped. Blood began to flow from his right nostril, which to Eddie looked about the size of the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Andolini cried out in pain, Tower in shock.

Eddie socked the muzzle of the pistol back into the soft place under Andolini's chin. Without looking away from him, Eddie said: "Keep an eye on the other one, Mr. Tower. If he starts to stir, you let me know."

"Who are you?" Tower almost bleated.

"A friend. The only one you've got who can save your bacon. Now watch him and let me work."

"A-All right."

Eddie Dean turned his full attention back to Andolini. "I laid George out because George is stupid. Even if he could carry the message I need carried, he wouldn't believe it. And how can a man convince others of what he doesn't believe himself?"

"Got a point there," Andolini said. He was looking up at Eddie with a kind of horrified fascination, perhaps finally seeing this stranger with the gun for what he really was. For what Roland had known he was from the very beginning, even when Eddie Dean had been nothing but a wetnose junkie shivering his way through heroin withdrawal. Jack Andolini was seeing a gunslinger.

"You bet I do," Eddie said. "And here's the message I want you to carry: Tower's off-limits."

Jack was shaking his head. "You don't understand. Tower has something somebody wants. My boss agreed to get it. He promised. And my boss always-"

"Always keeps his promises, I know," Eddie said. "Only this time he won't be able to, and that's not going to be his fault. Because Mr. Tower has decided not to sell his vacant lot up the street to The Sombra Corporation. He's going to sell it to the… mmm… to the Tet Corporation, instead. Got that?"

"Mister, I don't know you, but I know my boss. He won't stop."

"He will. Because Tower won't have anything to sell. The lot will no longer be his. And now listen even more closely, Jack. Listen ka-me, not ka-mai." Wisely, not foolishly.

Eddie leaned down. Jack stared up at him, fascinated by the bulging eyes-hazel irises, bloodshot whites-and the savagely grinning mouth which was now the distance of a kiss from his own.

"Mr. Calvin Tower has come under the protection of people more powerful and more ruthless than you could ever imagine, Jack. People who make Il Roche look like a hippie flower-child at Woodstock. You have to convince him that he has nothing to gain by continuing to harass Calvin Tower, and everything to lose."

"I can't-"

"As for you, know that the mark of Gilead is on this man. If you ever touch him again-if you ever even step foot in this shop again-I'll come to Brooklyn and kill your wife and children. Then I'll find your mother and father, and I'll kill them. Then I'll kill your mother's sisters and your father's brothers. Then I'll kill your grandparents, if they're still alive. You I'll save for last. Do you believe me?"

Jack Andolini went on staring into the face above him-the bloodshot eyes, the grinning, snarling mouth-but now with mounting horror. The fact was, he did believe. And whoever he was, he knew a great deal about Balazar and about this current deal. About the current deal, he might know more than Andolini knew himself.

"There's more of us," Eddie said, "and we're all about the same thing: protecting…" He almost said protecting the rose. "… protecting Calvin Tower. We'll be watching this place, we'll be watching Tower, we'll be watching Tower's friends-guys like Deepneau." Eddie saw Andolini's eyes flicker with surprise at that, and was satisfied. "Anybody who comes here and even raises his voice to Tower, we'll kill their whole families and them last. That goes for George, for 'Cimi Dretto, Tricks Postino… for your brother Claudio, too."

Andolini's eyes widened at each name, then winced momentarily shut at the name of his brother. Eddie thought that maybe he'd made his point. Whether or not Andolini could convince Balazar was another question. But in a way it doesn't even matter, he thought coldly. Once Tower's sold us the lot, it doesn't really matter what they do to him, does it?

"How do you know so much»" Andolini asked.

"That doesn't matter. Just pass on the message. Tell Balazar to tell his friends at Sombra that the lot is no longer for sale. Not to them, it isn't. And tell him that Tower is now under the protection of folk from Gilead who carry hard calibers."

"Hard-?"

"I mean folk more dangerous than any Balazar has ever dealt with before," Eddie said, "including the people from the Sombra Corporation. Tell him that if he persists, there'll be enough corpses in Brooklyn to fill Grand Army Plaza. And many of them will be women and children. Convince him."

"I… man, I'll try."

Eddie stood up, then backed up. Curled in the puddles of gasoline and the strews of broken glass, George Biondi was beginning to stir and mutter deep in his throat. Eddie gestured to Jack with the barrel of Roland's pistol, telling him to get up.

"You better try hard," he said.

NINE

Tower poured them each a cup of black coffee, then couldn't drink his. His hands were shaking too badly. After watching him try a couple of times (and thinking about a bomb-disposal character in UXB who lost his nerve), Eddie took pity on him and poured half of Tower's coffee into his own cup.

"Try now," he said, and pushed the half-cup back to the bookshop owner. Tower had his glasses on again, but one of the bows had been twisted and they sat crookedly on his face. Also, there was the crack running across the left lens like a lightning bolt. The two men were at the marble counter, Tower behind it, Eddie perched on one of the stools. Tower had carried the book Andolini had threatened to burn first out here with him, and put it down beside the coffee-maker. It was as if he couldn't bear to let it out of his sight.

Tower picked up the cup with his shaking hand (no rings on it, Eddie noticed-no rings on either hand) and drained it. Eddie couldn't understand why the man would choose to drink such so-so brew black. As far as Eddie himself was concerned, the really good taste was the Half and Half. After the months he had spent in Roland's world (or perhaps whole years had been sneaking by), it tasted as rich as heavy cream.

"Better?" Eddie asked.

"Yes." Tower looked out the window, as if expecting the return of the gray Town Car that had jerked and swayed away just ten minutes before. Then he looked back at Eddie. He was still frightened of the young man, but the last of his outright terror had departed when Eddie stowed the huge pistol back inside what he called "my friend's swag-bag." The bag was made of a scuffed, no-color leather, and closed along the top with lacings rather than a zipper. To Calvin Tower, it seemed that the young man had stowed the more frightening aspects of his personality in the "swag-bag" along with the oversized revolver. That was good, because it allowed Tower to believe that the kid had been bluffing about killing whole hoodlum families as well as the hoodlums themselves.

"Where's your pal Deepneau today?" Eddie asked.

"Oncologist. Two years ago, Aaron started seeing blood in the toilet bowl when he moved his bowels. A younger man, he thinks 'Goddam hemorrhoids' and buys a tube of Preparation H. Once you're in your seventies, you assume the worst. In his case it was bad but not terrible. Cancer moves slower when you get to be his age; even the Big C gets old. Funny to think of, isn't it? Anyway, they baked it with radiation and they say it's gone, but Aaron says you don't turn your back on cancer. He goes back every three months, and that's where he is. I'm glad. He's an old cockuh but still a hothead."

I should introduce Aaron Deepneau to Jamie Jaffords, Eddie thought. They could play Castles instead of chess, and yarn away the days of the Goat Moon.

Tower, meanwhile, was smiling sadly. He adjusted his glasses on his face. For a moment they stayed straight, and then they tilted again. The tilt was somehow worse than the crack; made Tower look slightly crazy as well as vulnerable. "He's a hothead and I'm a coward. Perhaps that's why we're friends-we fit around each other's wrong places, make something that's almost whole."

"Say maybe you're a little hard on yourself," Eddie said.

"I don't think so. My analyst says that anyone who wants to know how the children of an A-male father and a B-female mother turn out would only have to study my case-history. He also says-"

"Cry your pardon, Calvin, but I don't give much of a shit about your analyst. You held onto the lot up the street, and that's good enough for me."

"I don't take any credit for that," Calvin Tower said morosely. "It's like this"-he picked up the book that he'd put down beside the coffee-maker-"and the other ones he threatened to burn. I just have a problem letting things go. When my first wife said she wanted a divorce and I asked why, she said, 'Because when I married you, I didn't understand. I thought you were a man. It turns out you're a packrat.'"

"The lot is different from the books," Eddie said.

"Is it? Do you really think so?" Tower was looking at him, fascinated. When he raised his coffee cup, Eddie was pleased to see that the worst of his shakes had subsided.

"Don't you?"

"Sometimes I dream about it," Tower said. "I haven't actually been in there since Tommy Graham's deli went bust and I paid to have it knocked down. And to have the fence put up, of course, which was almost as expensive as the men with the wrecking ball. I dream there's a field of flowers in there. A field of roses. And instead of just to First Avenue, it goes on forever. Funny dream, huh?"

Eddie was sure that Calvin Tower did indeed have such dreams, but he thought he saw something else in the eyes hiding behind the cracked and tilted glasses. He thought Tower was letting this dream stand for all the dreams he would not tell.

"Funny," Eddie agreed. "I think you better pour me another slug of that mud, beg ya I do. We'll have us a little palaver."

Tower smiled and once more raised the book Andolini had meant to charbroil. "Palaver. It's the kind of thing they're always saying in here."

"Do you say so?"

"Uh-huh."

Eddie held out his hand. "Let me see."

At first Tower hesitated, and Eddie saw the bookshop owner's face briefly harden with a misery mix of emotions.

"Come on, Cal, I'm not gonna wipe my ass with it."

"No. Of course not. I'm sorry." And at that moment Tower looked sorry, the way an alcoholic might look after a particularly destructive bout of drunkenness. "I just… certain books are very important to me. And this one is a true rarity."

He passed it to Eddie, who looked at the plastic-protected cover and felt his heart stop.

"What?" Tower asked. He set his coffee cup down with a bang. "What's wrong?"

Eddie didn't reply. The cover illustration showed a small rounded building like a Quonset hut, only made of wood and thatched with pine boughs. Standing off to one side was an Indian brave wearing buckskin pants. He was shirtless, holding a tomahawk to his chest. In the background, an old-fashioned steam locomotive was charging across the prairie, boiling gray smoke into a blue sky.

The title of this book was The Dogan. The author was Benjamin Slightman Jr.

From some great distance, Tower was asking him if he was going to faint. From only slightly closer by, Eddie said that he wasn't. Benjamin Slightman Jr. Ben Slightman the Younger, in other words. And-

He pushed Tower's pudgy hand away when it tried to take the book back. Then Eddie used his own finger to count the letters in the author's name. There were, of course, nineteen.

TEN

He swallowed another cup of Tower's coffee, this time without the Half and Half. Then he took the plastic-wrapped volume in hand once more.

"What makes it special?" he asked. "I mean, it's special to me because I met someone recently whose name is the same as the name of the guy who wrote this. But-"

An idea struck Eddie, and he turned to the back flap, hoping for a picture of the author. What he found instead was a curt two-line author bio: "BENJAMIN SLIGHTMAN, JR. is a rancher in Montana. This is his second novel." Below this was a drawing of an eagle, and a slogan: buy war bonds!

"But why's it special to you? What makes it worth seventy-five hundred bucks?"

Tower's face kindled. Fifteen minutes before he had been in mortal terror for his life, but you'd never know it looking at him now, Eddie thought. Now he was in the grip of his obsession. Roland had his Dark Tower; this man had his rare books.

He held it so Eddie could see the cover. "The Dogan, right?"

"Right."

Tower flipped the book open and pointed to the inner flap, also under plastic, where the story was summarized. "And here?"

" 'TheDogan,' " Eddie read. " 'A thrilling tale of the old west and one Indian brave's heroic effort to survive.' So?"

"Now look at this!" Tower said triumphantly, and turned to the title page. Here Eddie read:

"I don't get it," Eddie said. "What's the big deal?"

Tower rolled his eyes. "Look again."

"Why don't you just tell me what-"

"No, look again. I insist. The joy is in the discovery, Mr. Dean. Any collector will tell you the same. Stamps, coins, or books, the joy is in the discovery."

He flipped back to the cover again, and this time Eddie saw it. "The title on the front's misprinted, isn't it? Dogan instead of Hogan"

Tower nodded happily. "A hogan is an Indian home of the type illustrated on the front. A dogan is… well, nothing. The misprinted cover makes the book somewhat valuable, but now… look at this…"

He turned to the copyright page and handed the book to Eddie. The copyright date was 1943, which of course explained the eagle and the slogan on the author-bio flap. The title of the book was given as The Hogan, so that seemed all right. Eddie was about to ask when he got it for himself.

"They left the 'Jr.' off the author's name, didn't they?"

"Yes! Yes!" Tower was almost hugging himself. "As if the book had actually been written by the author's father! In fact, once when I was at a bibliographic convention in Philadelphia, I explained this book's particular situation to an attorney who gave a lecture on copyright law, and this guy said that Slightman Jr.'s father might actually be able to assert right of ownership over this book because of a simple typographical error! Amazing, don't you think?"

"Totally," Eddie said, thinking Slightman the Elder. Thinking Slightman the Younger. Thinking about how Jake had become fast friends with the latter and wondering why this gave him such a bad feeling now, sitting here and drinking coffee in little old Calla New York.

At least he took the Ruger, Eddie thought.

"Are you telling me that's all it takes to make a book valuable?" he asked Tower. "One misprint on the cover, a couple more inside, and all at once the thing's worth seventy-five hundred bucks?"

"Not at all," Tower said, looking shocked. "But Mr. Slightman wrote three really excellent Western novels, all taking the Indians' point of view. The Hogan is the middle one. He became a big bug in Montana after the war-some job having to do with water and mineral rights-and then, here is the irony, a group of Indians killed him. Scalped him, actually. They were drinking outside a general store-"

A general store named Took's, Eddie thought. I'd bet my watch and warrant on it.

"-and apparendy Mr. Slightman said something they took objection to, and… well, there goes your ballgame."

"Do all your really valuable books have similar stories?" Eddie asked. "I mean, some sort of coincidence makes them valuable, and not just the stories themselves?"

Tower laughed. "Young man, most people who collect rare books won't even open their purchases. Opening and closing a book damages the spine. Hence damaging the resale price."

"Doesn't that strike you as slightly sick behavior?"

"Not at all," Tower said, but a tell tale red blush was climbing his cheeks. Part of him apparently took Eddie's point. "If a customer spends eight thousand dollars for a signed first edition of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, it makes perfect sense to put that book away in a safe place where it can be admired but not touched. If the fellow actually wants to read the story, let him buy a Vintage paperback."

"You believe that," Eddie said, fascinated. "You actually believe that."

"Well… yes. Books can be objects of great value. That value is created in different ways. Sometimes just the author's signature is enough to do it. Sometimes-as in this case-it's a misprint. Sometimes it's a first print-run-a first edition-that's extremely small. And does any of this have to do with why you came here, Mr. Dean? Is it what you wanted to… to palaver about?"

"No, I suppose not." But what exactly had he wanted to palaver about? He'd known-it had all been perfectly clear to him as he'd herded Andolini and Biondi out of the back room, then stood in the doorway watching them stagger to the Town Car, supporting each other. Even in cynical, mind-your-own-business New York, they had drawn plenty of looks. Both of them had been bleeding, and both had had the same stunned What the hell HAPPENED tome look in their eyes. Yes, then it had been clear. The book-and the name of the author-had muddied up his thinking again. He took it from Tower and set it facedown on the counter so he wouldn't have to look at it. Then he went to work regathering his thoughts.

"The first and most important thing, Mr. Tower, is that you have to get out of New York until July fifteenth. Because they'll be back. Probably not those guys specifically, but some of the other guys Balazar uses. And they'll be more eager than ever to teach you and me a lesson. Balazar's a despot." This was a word Eddie had learned from Susannah-she had used it to describe the Tick-Tock Man. "His way of doing business is to always escalate. You slap him, he slaps back twice as hard. Punch him in the nose, he breaks your jaw. You toss a grenade, he tosses a bomb."

Tower groaned. It was a theatrical sound (although probably not meant that way), and under other circumstances, Eddie might have laughed. Not under these. Besides, everything he'd wanted to say to Tower was coming back to him. He could do this dicker, by God. He would do this dicker.

"Me they probably won't be able to get at. I've got business elsewhere. Over the hills and far away, may ya say so. Your job is to make sure they won't be able to get at you, either."

"But surely… after what you just did… and even if they didn't believe you about the women and children…" Tower's eyes, wide behind his crooked spectacles, begged Eddie to say that he had really not been serious about creating enough corpses to fill Grand Army Plaza. Eddie couldn't help him there.

"Cal, listen. Guys like Balazar don't believe or disbelieve. What they do is test the limits. Did I scare Big Nose? No, just knocked him out. Did I scare Jack? Yes. And it'll stick, because Jack's got a little bit of imagination. Will Balazar be impressed that I scared Ugly Jack? Yes… but just enough to be cautious."

Eddie leaned over the counter, looking at Tower earnestly.

"I don't want to kill kids, okay? Let's get that straight. In… well, in another place, let's leave it at that, in another place me and my friends are going to put our lives on the line to save kids. But they're human kids. People like Jack and Tricks Postino and Balazar himself, they're animals. Wolves on two legs. And do wolves raise human beings? No, they raise more wolves. Do male wolves mate with human women? No, they mate with female wolves. So if I had to go in there-and I would if I had to-I'd tell myself I was cleaning out a pack of wolves, right down to the smallest cub. No more than that. And no less."

"My God he means it," Tower said. He spoke low, and all in a breath, and to the thin air.

"I absolutely do, but it's neither here nor there," Eddie said. "The point is, they'll come after you. Not to kill you, but to turn you around in their direction again. If you stay here, Cal, I think you can look forward to a serious maiming at the very least. Is there a place you can go until the fifteenth of next month? Do you have enough money? I don't have any, but I guess I could get some."

In his mind, Eddie was already in Brooklyn. Balazar guardian-angeled a poker game in the back room of Bernie's Barber Shop, everybody knew that. The game might not be going on during a weekday, but there'd be somebody back there with cash. Enough to-

"Aaron has some money," Tower was saying reluctantly. "He's offered a good many times. I've always told him no. He's also always telling me I need to go on a vacation. I think by this he means I should get away from the fellows you just turned out. He is curious about what they want, but he doesn't ask. A hothead, but a gentleman hothead." Tower smiled briefly. "Perhaps Aaron and I could go on a vacation together, young sir. After all, we might not get another chance."

Eddie was pretty sure the chemo and radiation treatments were going to keep Aaron Deepneau up and on his feet for at least another four years, but this was probably not the time to say so. He looked toward the door of The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind and saw the other door. Beyond it was the mouth of the cave. Sitting there like a comic-strip yogi, just a cross-legged silhouette, was the gunslinger. Eddie wondered how long he'd been gone over there, how long Roland had been listening to the muffled but still maddening sound of the todash chimes.

"Would Atlantic City be far enough, do you think?" Tower asked timidly.

Eddie Dean almost shuddered at the thought. He had a brief vision of two plump sheep-getting on in years, yes, but still quite tasty-wandering into not just a pack of wolves but a whole city of them.

"Not there," Eddie said. "Anyplace but there."

"What about Maine or New Hampshire? Perhaps we could rent a cottage on a lake somewhere until the fifteenth of July."

Eddie nodded. He was a city boy. It was hard for him to imagine the bad guys way up in northern New England, wearing those checkered caps and down vests as they chomped their pepper sandwiches and drank their Ruffino. "That'd be better," he said. "And while you're there, you might see if you could find a lawyer."

Tower burst out laughing. Eddie looked at him, head cocked, smiling a little himself. It was always good to make folks laugh, but it was better when you knew what the fuck they were laughing at.

"I'm sorry," Tower said after a moment or two. "It's just that Aaron ivas a. lawyer. His sister and two brothers, all younger, are still lawyers. They like to boast that they have the most unique legal letterhead in New York, perhaps in the entire United States. It reads simply 'deepneau.' "

"That speeds things up," Eddie said. "I want you to have Mr. Deepneau draw up a contract while you're vacationing in New England-"

"Hiding in New England," Tower said. He suddenly looked morose. "Holed up in New England."

"Call it whatcha wanna," Eddie said, "but get that paper drawn up. You're going to sell that lot to me and my friends. To the Tet Corporation. You're just gonna get a buck to start with, but I can almost guarantee you that in the end you'll get fair market value."

He had more to say, lots, but stopped there. When he'd held his hand out for the book, The Dogan or The Hogan or whatever it was, an expression of miserly reluctance had come over Tower's face. What made the look unpleasant was the undercurrent of stupidity in it… and not very far under, either. Oh God, he's gonna fight me on this. After everything that's happened, he's still gonna fight me on it. And why? Because he really is apackrat.

"You can trust me, Cal," he said, knowing trust was not exactly the issue. "I set my watch and warrant on it. Hear me, now. Hear me, I beg."

"I don't know you from Adam. You walk in off the street-"

"-and save your life, don't forget that part."

Tower's face grew set and stubborn. "They weren't going to kill me. You said that yourself."

"They were gonna burn your favorite books. Your most valuable ones."

"Not my most valuable. Also, that might have been a bluff."

Eddie took a deep breath and let it out, hoping his suddenly strong desire to lean across the counter and sink his fingers into Tower's fat throat would depart or at least subside. He reminded himself that if Tower hadn't been stubborn, he probably would have sold the lot to Sombra long before now. The rose would have been plowed under. And the Dark Tower? Eddie had an idea that when the rose died, the Dark Tower would simply fall… like the one in Babel when God had gotten tired of it and wiggled His finger. No waiting around another hundred or thousand years for the machinery running the Beams to quit. Just ashes, ashes, we all fall down. And then? Hail the Crimson King, lord of todash darkness.

"Cal, if you sell me and my friends your vacant lot, you're off the hook. Not only that, but you'll eventually have enough money to run your little shop for the rest of your life." He had a sudden thought. "Hey, do you know a company called Holmes Dental?"

Tower smiled. "Who doesn't? I use their floss. And their toothpaste. I tried the mouthwash, but it's too strong. Why do you ask?"

"Because Odetta Holmes is my wife. I may look like Froggy the Gremlin, but in truth I'm Prince Fuckin Charming."

Tower was quiet for a long time. Eddie curbed his impatience and let the man think. At last Tower said, "You think I'm being foolish. That I'm being Silas Marner, or worse, Ebenezer Scrooge."

Eddie didn't know who Silas Marner was, but he took Tower's point from the context of the discussion. "Let's put it this way," he said. "After what you've just been through, you're too smart not to know where your best interests lie."

"I feel obligated to tell you that this isn't just mindless miserliness on my part; there's an element of caution, as well. I know that piece of New York is valuable, any piece of Manhattan is, but it's not just that. I have a safe out back. There's something in it. Something perhaps even more valuable than my copy of Ulysses."

"Then why isn't it in your safe-deposit box?"

"Because it's supposed to be here," Tower said. "It's always been here. Perhaps waiting for you, or someone like you. Once, Mr. Dean, my family owned almost all of Turtle Bay, and… well, wait. Will you wait?"

"Yes," Eddie said.

What choice?

ELEVEN

When Tower was gone, Eddie got off the stool and went to the door only he could see. He looked through it. Dimly, he could hear chimes. More clearly he could hear his mother. "Why don't you get out of there?" she called dolorously. "You'll only make things worse, Eddie-you always do."

That's my Ma, he thought, and called the gunslinger's name.

Roland pulled one of the bullets from his ear. Eddie noted the oddly clumsy way he handled it-almost pawing at it, as if his fingers were stiff-but there was no time to think about it now.

"Are you all right?" Eddie called.

"Do fine. And you?"

"Yeah, but… Roland, can you come through? I might need a little help."

Roland considered, then shook his head. "The box might close if I did. Probably would close. Then the door would close. And we'd be trapped on that side."

"Can't you prop the damn thing open with a stone or a bone or something?"

"No," Roland said. "It wouldn't work. The ball is powerful."

And it's working on you, Eddie thought. Roland's face looked haggard, the way it had when the lobstrosities' poison had been inside him.

"All right," he said.

"Be as quick as you can."

"I will."

TWELVE

When he turned around, Tower was looking at him quizzically. "Who were you talking to?"

Eddie stood aside and pointed at the doorway. "Do you see anything there, sai?"

Calvin Tower looked, started to shake his head, then looked longer. "A shimmer," he said at last. "Like hot air over an incinerator. Who's there? What's there?"

"For the time being, let's say nobody. What have you got in your hand?"

Tower held it up. It was an envelope, very old. Written on it in copperplate were the words Stephen Toren and Dead Letter. Below, carefully drawn in ancient ink, were the same symbols that were on the door and the box:

New we might be getting somewhere, Eddie thought.

"Once this envelope held the will of my great-great-great grandfather," Calvin Tower said. "It was dated March 19th, 1846. Now there's nothing but a single piece of paper with a name written upon it. If you can tell me what that name is, young man, I'll do as you ask."

And so, Eddie mused, it comes down to another riddle. Only this time it wasn't four lives that hung upon the answer, but all of existence.

Thank God it's an easy one, he thought.

"It's Deschain," Eddie said. "The first name will be either Roland, the name of my dinh, or Steven, the name of his father."

All the blood seemed to fall out of Calvin Tower's face. Eddie had no idea how the man was able to keep his feet. "My dear God in heaven," he said.

With trembling fingers, he removed an ancient and brittle piece of paper from the envelope, a time traveler that had voyaged over a hundred and thirty-one years to this where and when. It was folded. Tower opened it and put it on the counter, where they could both read the words Stefan Toren had written in the same firm copperplate hand:

Roland Deschain, of Giliad.

The line of ELD

GUNSLINGER

THIRTEEN

There was more talk, about fifteen minutes' worth, and Eddie supposed at least some of it was important, but the real deal had gone down when he'd told Tower the name his three-times-great-grandfather had written on a slip of paper fourteen years before the Civil War got rolling.

What Eddie had discovered about Tower during their palaver was dismaying. He harbored some respect for the man (for any man who could hold out for more than twenty seconds against Balazar's goons), but didn't like him much. There was a kind of willful stupidity about him. Eddie thought it was self-created and maybe propped up by his analyst, who would tell him about how he had to take care of himself, how he had to be the captain of his own ship, the author of his own destiny, respect his own desires, all that blah-blah. All the little code words and terms that meant it was all right to be a selfish fuck. That it was noble, even. When Tower told Eddie that Aaron Deepneau was his only friend, Eddie wasn't surprised. What surprised him was that Tower had any friends at all. Such a man could never be ka-tet, and it made Eddie uneasy to know that their destinies were so tightly bound together.

You'll just have to trust to ka. It's what ka's for, isn't it?

Sure it was, but Eddie didn't have to like it.

FOURTEEN

Eddie asked if Tower had a ring with Ex Liveris on it. Tower looked puzzled, then laughed and told Eddie he must mean Ex Libris. He rummaged on one of his shelves, found a book, showed Eddie the plate in front. Eddie nodded.

"No," Tower said. "But it'd be just the thing for a guy like me, wouldn't it?" He looked at Eddie keenly. "Why do you ask?"

But Tower's future responsibility to save a man now exploring the hidden highways of multiple Americas was a subject Eddie didn't feel like getting into right now. He'd come as close to blowing the guy's mind as he wanted to, and he had to get back through the unfound door before Black Thirteen wore Roland away to a frazzle.

"Never mind. But if you see one, you ought to pick it up. One more thing and then I'm gone."

"What's that?"

"I want your promise that as soon as I leave, you'll leave."

Tower once more grew shifty. It was the side of him Eddie knew he could come to outright loathe, given time. "Why… to tell you the truth, I don't know if I can do that. Early evenings are often a very busy time for me… people are much more prone to browse once the workday's over… and Mr. Brice is coming in to look at a first of The Troubled Air, Irwin Shaw's novel about radio and the McCarthy era… I'll have to at least skim through my appointment calendar, and…"

He droned on, actually gathering steam as he descended toward trivialities.

Eddie said, very mildly: "Do you like your balls, Calvin? Are you maybe as attached to them as they are to you?"

Tower, who'd been wondering about who would feed Sergio if he just pulled up stakes and ran, now stopped and looked at him, puzzled, as if he had never heard this simple one-syllable word before.

Eddie nodded helpfully. "Your nuts. Your sack. Your stones. Your cojones. The old sperm-firm. Your testicles."

"I don't see what-"

Eddie's coffee was gone. He poured some Half and Half into the cup and drank that, instead. It was very tasty. "I told you that if you stayed here, you could look forward to a serious maiming. That's what I meant. That's probably where they'll start, with your balls. To teach you a lesson. As to when it happens, what that mostly depends on is traffic."

"Traffic." Tower said it with a complete lack of vocal expression.

"That's right," Eddie said, sipping his Half and Half as if it were a thimble of brandy. "Basically how long it takes Jack Andolini to drive back out to Brooklyn and then how long it takes Balazar to load up some old beater of a van or panel truck with guys to come back here. I'm hoping Jack's too dazed to just phone. Did you think Balazar'd wait until tomorrow? Convene a little brain-trust of guys like Kevin Blake and 'Cimi Dretto to discuss the matter?" Eddie raised first one finger and then two. The dust of another world was beneath the nails. "First, they got no brains; second, Balazar doesn't trust em."

"What he'll do, Cal, is what any successful despot does: he'll react right away, quick as a flash. The rush-hour traffic will hold em up a little, but if you're still here at six, half past at the latest, you can say goodbye to your balls. They'll hack them off with a knife, then cauterize the wound with one of those little torches, those Bernz-O-Matics-"

"Stop," Tower said. Now instead of white, he'd gone green. Especially around the gills. "I'll go to a hotel down in the Village. There are a couple of cheap ones that cater to writers and artists down on their luck, ugly rooms but not that bad. I'll call Aaron, and we'll go north tomorrow morning."

"Fine, but first you have to pick a town to go to," Eddie said. "Because I or one of my friends may need to get in touch with you."

"How am I supposed to do that? I don't know any towns in New England north of Westport, Connecticut!"

"Make some calls once you get to the hotel in the Village," Eddie said. "You pick the town, and then tomorrow morning, before you leave New York, send your pal Aaron up to your vacant lot. Have him write the zip code on the board fence." An unpleasant thought struck Eddie. "You have zip codes, don't you? I mean, they've been invented, right?"

Tower looked at him as if he were crazy. "Of course they have."

" 'Kay. Have him put it on the Forty-sixth street side, all the way down where the fence ends. Have you got that?"

"Yes, but-"

"They probably won't have your bookshop staked out tomorrow morning-they'll assume you got smart and blew-but if they do, they won't have the lot staked out, and if they have the lot staked out, it'll be the Second Avenue side. And if they have the Forty-sixth Street side staked out, they'll be looking for you, not him."

Tower was smiling a little bit in spite of himself. Eddie relaxed and smiled back. "But…? If they're also looking for Aaron?"

"Have him wear the sort of clothes he doesn't usually wear. If he's a blue jeans man, have him wear a suit. If he's a suit man-"

"Have him wear blue jeans."

"Correct. And sunglasses wouldn't be a bad idea, assuming the day isn't cloudy enough to make them look odd. Have him use a black felt-tip. Tell him it doesn't have to be artistic. He just walks to the fence, as if to read one of the posters. Then he writes the numbers and off he goes. And tell him for Christ's sake don't fuck up."

"And how are you going to find us once you get to Zip Code Whatever?"

Eddie thought of Took's, and their palaver with the folken as they sat in the big porch rockers. Letting anyone who wanted to have a look and ask a question.

"Go to the local general store. Have a little conversation, tell anyone who's interested that you're in town to write a book or paint pictures of the lobster-pots. I'll find you."

"All right," Tower said. "It's a good plan. You do this well, young man."

I was made for it, Eddie thought but didn't say. What he said was, "I have to be going. I've stayed too long as it is."

"There's one thing you have to help me do before you go," Tower said, and explained.

Eddie's eyes widened. When Tower had finished-it didn't take long-Eddie burst out, "Aw, you're shittin!"

Tower tipped his head toward the door to his shop, where he could see that faint shimmer. It made the passing pedestrians on Second Avenue look like momentary mirages. "There's a door there. You as much as said so, and I believe you. I can't see it, but I can see something."

"You're insane," Eddie said. "Totally gonzo." He didn't mean it-not precisely-but less than ever he liked having his fate so firmly woven into the fate of a man who'd make such a request. Such a demand.

"Maybe I am and maybe I'm not," Tower said. He folded his arms over his broad but flabby chest. His voice was soft but the look in his eyes was adamant. "In either case, this is my condition for doing all that you say. For falling in with your madness, in other words."

"Aw, Cal, for God's sake! God and the Man Jesus! I'm only asking you to do what Stefan Toren's will told you to do."

The eyes did not soften or cut aside as they did when Tower was waffling or preparing to fib. If anything, they grew stonier yet. "Stefan Toren's dead and I'm not. I've told you my condition for doing what you want. The only question is whether or not-"

"Yeah, yeah, YEAF! " Eddie cried, and drank off the rest of the white stuff in his cup. Then he picked up the carton and drained that, for good measure. It looked like he was going to need the strength. "Come on," he said. "Let's do it."

FIFTEEN

Roland could see into the bookshop, but it was like looking at things on the bottom of a fast-running stream. He wished Eddie would hurry. Even with the bullets buried deep in his ears he could hear the todash chimes, and nothing blocked the terrible smells: now hot metal, now rancid bacon, now ancient melting cheese, now burning onions. His eyes were watering, which probably accounted for at least some of the wavery look of things seen beyond the door.

Far worse than the sound of the chimes or the smells was the way the ball was insinuating itself into his already compromised joints, filling them up with what felt like splinters of broken glass. So far he'd gotten nothing but a few twinges in his good left hand, but he had no illusions; the pain there and everywhere else would continue to increase for as long as the box was open and Black Thirteen shone out unshielded. Some of the pain from the dry twist might go away once the ball was hidden again, but Roland didn't think all of it would. And this might only be the beginning.

As if to congratulate him on his intuition, a baleful flare of pain setded into his right hip and began to throb there. To Roland it felt like a bag filled with warm liquid lead. He began to massage it with his right hand… as if that would do any good.

"Roland!" The voice was bubbly and distant-like the things he could see beyond the door, it seemed to be underwater-but it was unmistakably Eddie's. Roland looked up from his hip and saw that Eddie and Tower had carried some sort of case over to the unfound door. It appeared to be filled with books. "Roland, can you help us?"

The pain had settled so deeply into his hips and knees that Roland wasn't even sure he could get up… but he did it, and fluidly. He didn't know how much of his condition Eddie's sharp eyes might have already seen, but Roland didn't want them to see any more. Not, at least, until their adventures in Calla Bryn Sturgis were over.

"When we push it, you pull!"

Roland nodded his understanding, and the bookcase slid forward. There was one strange and vertiginous moment when the half in the cave was firm and clear and the half still back in The Manhattan Bookstore of the Mind shimmered unsteadily. Then Roland took hold of it and pulled it through. It juddered and squalled across the floor of the cave, pushing aside little piles of pebbles and bones.

As soon as it was out of the doorway, the lid of the ghost-wood box began to close. So did the door itself.

"No, you don't," Roland murmured. "No, you don't, you bastard." He slipped the remaining two fingers of his right hand into the narrowing space beneath the lid of the box. The door stopped moving and remained ajar when he did. And enough was enough. Now even his teeth were buzzing. Eddie was having some last little bit of palaver with Tower, but Roland no longer cared if they were the secrets of the universe.

"Eddie!" he roared. "Eddie, to me!"

And, thankfully, Eddie grabbed his swag-bag and came. The moment he was through the door, Roland closed the box. The unfound door shut a second later with a flat and undramatic clap. The chimes ceased. So did the jumble of poison pain pouring into Roland's joints. The relief was so tremendous that he cried out. Then, for the next ten seconds or so, all he could do was lower his chin to his chest, close his eyes, and struggle not to sob.

"Say thankya," he managed at last. "Eddie, say thankya."

"Don't mention it. Let's get out of this cave, what do you think?"

"I think yes," Roland said. "Gods, yes."

SIXTEEN

"Didn't like him much, did you?" Roland asked.

Ten minutes had passed since Eddie's return. They had moved a little distance down from the cave, then stopped where the path twisted through a small rocky inlet. The roaring gale that had tossed back their hair and plastered their clothes against their bodies was here reduced to occasional prankish gusts. Roland was grateful for them. He hoped they would excuse the slow and clumsy way he was building his smoke. Yet he felt Eddie's eyes upon him, and the young man from Brooklyn-who had once been almost as dull and unaware as Andolini and Biondi-now saw much.

"Tower, you mean."

Roland tipped him a sardonic glance. "Of whom else would I speak? The cat?"

Eddie gave a brief grunt of acknowledgment, almost a laugh. He kept pulling in long breaths of the clean air. It was good to be back. Going to New York in the flesh had been better than going todash in one way-that sense of lurking darkness had been gone, and the accompanying sense of thinness - but God, the place stank. Mostly it was cars and exhaust (the oily clouds of diesel were the worst), but there were a thousand other bad smells, too. Not the least of them was the aroma of too many human bodies, their essential polecat odor not hidden at all by the perfumes and sprays the folken put on themselves. Were they unconscious of how bad they smelled, all huddled up together as they were? Eddie supposed they must be. Had been himself, once upon a time. Once upon a time he couldn't wait to get back to New York, would have killed to get there.

"Eddie? Come back from Nis!" Roland snapped his fingers in front of Eddie Dean's face.

"I'm sorry," he said. "As for Tower… no, I didn't like him much. God, sending his books through like that! Making his lousy first editions part of his condition for helping to save the fucking universe!"

"He doesn't think of it in those terms… unless he does so in his dreams. And you know they'll burn his shop when they get there and find him gone. Almost surely. Pour gasoline under the door and light it. Break his window and toss in a grenado, either manufactured or homemade. Do you mean to tell me that never occurred to you?"

Of course it had. "Well, maybe."

It was Roland's turn to utter the humorous grunting sound. "Not much may in that be. So he saved his best books. And now, in Doorway Cave, we have something to hide the Pere's treasure behind. Although I suppose it must be counted our treasure now."

"His courage didn't strike me as real courage," Eddie said. "It was more like greed."

"Not all are called to the way of the sword or the gun or the ship," Roland said, "but all serve ka."

"Really? Does the Crimson King? Or the low men and women Callahan talked about?"

Roland didn't reply.

Eddie said, "He may do well. Tower, I mean. Not the cat."

"Very amusing," Roland said dryly. He scratched a match on the seat of his pants, cupped the flame, lit his smoke.

"Thank you, Roland. You're growing in that respect. Ask me if I think Tower and Deepneau can get out of New York City clean."

"Do you?"

"No, I think they'll leave a trail. We could follow it, but I'm hoping Balazar's men won't be able to. The one I worry about is Jack Andolini. He's creepy-smart. As for Balazar, he made a contract with this Sombra Corporation."

"Took the king's salt."

"Yeah, I guess somewhere up the line he did," Eddie said. He had heard King instead of king, as in Crimson King. "Balazar knows that when you make a contract, you have to fill it or have a damned good reason why not. Fail and word gets out. Stories start to circulate about how so-and-so's going soft, losing his shit. They've still got three weeks to find Tower and force him to sell the lot to Sombra. They'll use it. Balazar's not the FBI, but he is a connected guy, and… Roland, the worst thing about Tower is that in some ways, none of this is real to him. It's like he's mistaken his life for a life in one of his storybooks. He thinks things have got to turn out all right because the writer's under contract."

"You think he'll be careless."

Eddie voiced a rather wild laugh. "Oh, I know he'll be careless. The question is whether or not Balazar will catch him at it"

"We're going to have to monitor Mr. Tower. Mind him for safety's sake. That's what you think, isn't it?"

"Yer-bugger!" Eddie said, and after a moment's silent consideration, both of them burst out laughing. When the fit had passed, Eddie said: "I think we ought to send Callahan, if he'll go. You probably think I'm crazy, but-"

"Not at all," Roland said. "He's one of us… or could be. I felt that from the first. And he's used to traveling in strange places. I'll put it to him today. Tomorrow I'll come up here with him and see him through the doorway-"

"Let me do it," Eddie said. "Once was enough for you. At least for awhile."

Roland eyed him carefully, then pitched his cigarette over the drop. "Why do you say so, Eddie?"

"Your hair's gotten whiter up around here." Eddie patted the crown of his own head. "Also, you're walking a little stiff. It's better now, but I'd guess the old rheumatiz kicked in on you a little. Fess up."

"All right, I fess," Roland said. If Eddie thought it was no more than old Mr. Rheumatiz, that was not so bad.

"Actually, I could bring him up tonight, long enough to get the zip code," Eddie said. "It'll be day again over there, I bet."

"None of us is coming up this path in the dark. Not if we can help it."

Eddie looked down the steep incline to where the fallen boulder jutted out, turning fifteen feet of their course into a tightrope-walk. "Point taken."

Roland started to get up. Eddie reached out and took his arm. "Stay a couple of minutes longer, Roland. Do ya."

Roland sat down again, looking at him.

Eddie took a deep breath, let it out. "Ben Slightman's dirty," he said. "He's the tattletale. I'm almost sure of it."

"Yes, I know."

Eddie looked at him, wide-eyed. "You know? How could you possibly-"

"Let's say I suspected."

"How?"

"His spectacles," Roland said. "Ben Slightman the Elder's the only person in Calla Bryn Sturgis with spectacles. Come on, Eddie, day's waiting. We can talk as we walk."

SEVENTEEN

They couldn't, though, not at first, because the path was too steep and narrow. But later, as they approached the bottom of the mesa, it grew wider and more forgiving. Talk once more became practical, and Eddie told Roland about the book, The Dogan or The Hogan, and the author's oddly disputable name. He recounted the oddity of the copyright page (not entirely sure that Roland grasped this part), and said it had made him wonder if something was pointing toward the son, too. That seemed like a crazy idea, but-

"I think that if Benny Slightman was helping his father inform on us," Roland said, "Jake would know."

"Are you sure he doesn't?" Eddie asked.

This gave Roland some pause. Then he shook his head. "Jake suspects the father."

"He told you that?"

"He didn't have to."

They had almost reached the horses, who raised their heads alertly and seemed glad to see them.

"He's out there at the Rocking B," Eddie said. "Maybe we ought to take a ride out there. Invent some reason to bring him back to the Pere's…" He trailed off, looking at Roland closely. "No?"

"No." '

"Why not?"

"Because this is Jake's part of it."

"That's hard, Roland. He and Benny Slightman like each other. A lot. If Jake ends up being the one to show the Calla what his Dad's been doing-"

"Jake will do what he needs to do," Roland said. "So will we all."

"But he's still just a boy, Roland. Don't you see that?"

"He won't be for much longer," Roland said, and mounted up. He hoped Eddie didn't see the momentary wince of pain that cramped his face when he swung his right leg over the saddle, but of course Eddie did.

ONE

Jake and Benny Slightman spent the morning of that same day moving hay bales from the upper lofts of the Rocking B's three inner barns to the lower lofts, then breaking them open. The afternoon was for swimming and water-fighting in the Whye, which was still pleasant enough if one avoided the deep pools; those had grown cold with the season.

In between these two activities they ate a huge lunch in the bunkhouse with half a dozen of the hands (not Slightman the Elder; he was off at Telford's Buckhead Ranch, working a stock-trade). "I en't seen that boy of Ben's work's'hard in my life," Cookie said as he put fried chops down on the table and the boys dug in eagerly. "You'll wear him plumb out, Jake."

That was Jake's intention, of course. After haying in the morning, swimming in the afternoon, and a dozen or more barn-jumps for each of them by the red light of evening, he thought Benny would sleep like the dead. The problem was he might do the same himself. When he went out to wash at the pump-sunset come and gone by then, leaving ashes of roses deepening to true dark-he took Oy with him. He splashed his face clean and flicked drops of water for the animal to catch, which he did with great alacrity. Then Jake dropped to one knee and gently took hold of the sides of the billy-bumbler's face. "Listen to me, Oy."

"Oy!"

"I'm going to go to sleep, but when the moon rises, I want you to wake me up. Quietly, do'ee ken?"

"Ken!" Which might mean something or nothing. If someone had been taking wagers on it, Jake would have bet on something. He had great faith in Oy. Or maybe it was love. Or maybe those things were the same.

"When the moon rises. Say moon, Oy."

"Moon!"

Sounded good, but Jake would set his own internal alarm clock to wake him up at moonrise. Because he wanted to go out to where he'd seen Benny's Da' and Andy that other time. That queer meeting worried at his mind more rather than less as time went by. He didn't want to believe Benny's Da' was involved with the Wolves-Andy, either-but he had to make sure. Because it was what Roland would do. For that reason if no other.

TWO

The two boys lay in Benny's room. There was one bed, which Benny had of course offered to his guest, but Jake had refused it. What they'd come up with instead was a system by which Benny took the bed on what he called "even-hand" nights, and Jake took it on "odd-hand" nights. This was Jake's night for the floor, and he was glad. Benny's goosedown-filled mattress was far too soft. In light of his plan to rise with the moon, the floor was probably better. Safer.

Benny lay with his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. He had coaxed Oy up onto the bed with him and the bumbler lay sleeping in a curled comma, his nose beneath his cartoon squiggle of a tail.

"Jake?" A whisper. "You asleep?"

"No."

"Me neither." A pause. "It's been great, having you here."

"It's been great for me," Jake said, and meant it.

"Sometimes being the only kid gets lonely."

"Don't I know it… and I was always the only one." Jake paused. "Bet you were sad after your sissa died."

"Sometimes I'm still sad." At least he said it in a matter-of-fact tone, which made it easier to hear. "Reckon you'll stay after you beat the Wolves?"

"Probably not long."

"You're on a quest, aren't you?"

"I guess so."

"For what?"

The quest was to save the Dark Tower in this where and the rose in the New York where he and Eddie and Susannah had come from, but Jake did not want to say this to Benny, much as he liked him. The Tower and the rose were kind of secret things. The ka-tet's business. But neither did he want to lie.

"Roland doesn't talk about stuff much," he said.

A longer pause. The sound of Benny shifting, doing it quietly so as not to disturb Oy. "He scares me a little, your dinh."

Jake thought about that, then said: "He scares me a little, too."

"He scares my Pa."

Jake was suddenly very alert. "Really?"

"Yes. He says it wouldn't surprise him if, after you got rid of the Wolves, you turned on us. Then he said he was just joking, but that the old cowboy with the hard face scared him. I reckon that must have been your dinh, don't you?"

"Yeah," Jake said.

Jake had begun thinking Benny had gone to sleep when the other boy asked, "What was your room like back where you came from?"

Jake thought of his room and at first found it surprisingly hard to picture. It had been a long time since he'd thought of it. And now that he did, he was embarrassed to describe it too closely to Benny. His friend lived well indeed by Calla standards-Jake guessed there were very few smallhold kids Benny's age with their own rooms-but he would think a room such as Jake could describe that of an enchanted prince. The television? The stereo, with all his records, and the headphones for privacy? His posters of Stevie Wonder and The Jackson Five? His microscope, which showed him things too small to see with the naked eye? Was he supposed to tell this boy about such wonders and miracles?

"It was like this, only I had a desk," Jake said at last.

"A writing desk?" Benny got up on one elbow.

"Well yeah," Jake said, the tone implying Sheesh, what else?

"Paper? Pens? Quill pens?"

"Paper," Jake agreed. Here, at least, was a wonder Benny could understand. "And pens. But not quill. Ball."

"Ball pens? I don't understand."

So Jake began to explain, but halfway through he heard a snore. He looked across the room and saw Benny still facing him, but now with his eyes closed.

Oy opened his eyes-they were bright in the darkness-then winked at Jake. After that, he appeared to go back to sleep.

Jake looked at Benny for a long time, deeply troubled in ways he did not precisely understand… or want to.

At last, he went to sleep himself.

THREE

Some dark, dreamless time later, he came back to a semblance of wakefulness because of pressure on his wrist. Something pulling there. Almost painful. Teeth. Oy's.

"Oy, no, quittit," he mumbled, but Oy would not stop. He had Jake's wrist in his jaws and continued to shake it gently from side to side, stopping occasionally to administer a brisk tug. He only quit when Jake finally sat up and stared dopily out into the silver-flooded night.

"Moon," Oy said. He was sitting on the floor beside Jake, jaws open in an unmistakable grin, eyes bright. They should have been bright; a tiny white stone burned deep down in each one. "Moon!"

"Yeah," Jake whispered, and then closed his fingers around Oy's muzzle. "Hush!" He let go and looked over at Benny, who was now facing the wall and snoring deeply. Jake doubted if a howitzer shell would wake him.

"Moon," Oy said, much more quietly. Now he was looking out the window. "Moon, moon. Moon."

FOUR

Jake would have ridden bareback, but he needed Oy with him, and that made bareback difficult, maybe impossible. Luckily, the little border-pony sai Overholser had loaned him was as tame as a tabby-cat, and there was a scuffy old practice saddle in the barn's tackroom that even a kid could handle with ease.

Jake saddled the horse, then tied his bedroll behind, to the part Calla cowboys called the boat. He could feel the weight of the Ruger inside the roll-and, if he squeezed, the shape of it, as well. The duster with the commodious pocket in the front was hanging on a nail in the tackroom. Jake took it, whipped it into something like a fat belt, and cinched it around his middle. Kids in his school had sometimes worn their outer shirts that way on warm days. Like those of his room, this memory seemed far away, part of a circus parade that had marched through town… and then left.

That life was richer, a voice deep in his mind whispered.

This one is truer, whispered another, even deeper.

He believed that second voice, but his heart was still heavy with sadness and worry as he led the border-pony out through the back of the barn and away from the house. Oy padded along at his heel, occasionally looking up at the sky and muttering "Moon, moon," but mostly sniffing the crisscrossing scents on the ground. This trip was dangerous. Just crossing Devar-Tete Whye-going from the Calla side of things to the Thunderclap side-was dangerous, and Jake knew it. Yet what really troubled him was the sense of looming heartache. He thought of Benny, saying it had been great to have Jake at the Rocking B to chum around with. He wondered if Benny would feel the same way a week from now.

"Doesn't matter," he sighed. "It's ka."

"Ka," Oy said, then looked up. "Moon. Ka, moon. Moon, ka."

"Shut up," Jake said, not unkindly.

"Shut up ka," Oy said amiably. "Shut up moon. Shut up Ake. Shut up Oy." It was the most he'd said in months, and once it was out he fell silent. Jake walked his horse another ten minutes, past the bunkhouse and its mixed music of snores, grunts, and farts, then over the next hill. At that point, with the East Road in sight, he judged it safe to ride. He unrolled the duster, put it on, then deposited Oy in the pouch and mounted up.

FIVE

He was pretty sure he could go right to the place where Andy and Slightman had crossed the river, but reckoned he'd only have one good shot at this, and Roland would've said pretty sure wasn't good enough in such a case. So he went back to the place where he and Benny had tented instead, and from there to the jut of granite which had reminded him of a partially buried ship. Once again Oy stood panting into his ear. Jake had no problem sighting on the round rock with the shiny surface. The dead log that had washed up against it was still there, too, because the river hadn't done anything but fall over the last weeks. There had been no rain whatever, and this was something Jake was counting on to help him.

He scrambled back up to the flat place where he and Benny had tented out. Here he'd left his pony tethered to a bush. He led it down to the river, then scooped up Oy and rode across. The pony wasn't big, but the water still didn't come up much higher than his fetlocks. In less than a minute, they were on the far bank.

It looked the same on this side, but wasn't Jake knew it right away. Moonlight or no moonlight, it was darker somehow. Not exactly the way todash-New York had been dark, and there were no chimes, but there was a similarity, just the same. A sense of something waiting, and eyes that could turn in his direction if he was foolish enough to alert their owners to his presence. He had come to the edge of End-World. Jake's flesh broke out in goosebumps and he shivered. Oy looked up at him.

"S'all right," Jake whispered. 'Just had to get it out of my system."

He dismounted, put Oy down, and stowed the duster in the shadow of the round rock. He didn't think he'd need a coat for this part of his excursion; he was sweating, nervous. The babble of the river was loud, and he kept shooting glances across to the other side, wanting to make sure no one was coming. He didn't want to be surprised. That sense of presence, of others, was both strong and unpleasant. There was nothing good about what lived on this side of the Devar-Tete Whye; of that much Jake was sure. He felt better when he'd taken the docker's clutch out of the bedroll, cinched it in place, and then added the Ruger. The Ruger made him into a different person, one he didn't always like. But here, on the far side of the Whye, he was delighted to feel gunweight against his ribs, and delighted to be that person; that gunslinger.

Something farther off to the east screamed like a woman in life-ending agony. Jake knew it was only a rock-cat-he'd heard them before, when he'd been at the river with Benny, either fishing or swimming-but he still put his hand on the butt of the Ruger until it stopped. Oy had assumed the bowing position, front paws apart, head lowered, rump pointed skyward. Usually this meant he wanted to play, but there was nothing playful about his bared teeth.

"S'okay," Jake said. He rummaged in his bedroll again (he hadn't bothered to bring a saddlebag) until he found a red-checked cloth. This was Slightman the Elder's neckerchief, stolen four days previous from beneath the bunkhouse table, where the foreman had dropped it during a game of Watch Me and then forgotten it.

Quite the little thief I am, Jake thought. My Dad's gun, now Benny's Dad's snotrag. I can't tell if I'm working my way up or down.

It was Roland's voice that replied. You're doing what you were called here to do. Why don't you stop beating your breast and get started?

Jake held the neckerchief between his hands and looked down at Oy. "This always works in the movies," he said to the bumbler. "I have no idea if it works in real life… especially after weeks have gone by." He lowered the neckerchief to Oy, who stretched out his long neck and sniffed it delicately. "Find this smell, Oy. Find it and follow it."

"Oy!" But he just sat there, looking up at Jake.

"This, Dumbo," Jake said, letting him smell it again. "Find it! Go on!"

Oy got up, turned around twice, then began to saunter north along the bank of the river. He lowered his nose occasionally to the rocky ground, but seemed a lot more interested in the occasional dying-woman howl of the rock-cat. Jake watched his friend with steadily diminishing hope. Well, he'd seen which way Slightman had gone. He could go in that direction himself, course around a little, see what there was to see.

Oy turned around, came back toward Jake, then stopped. He sniffed a patch of ground more closely. The place where Slightman had come out of the water? It could have been. Oy made a thoughtful hoofing sound far back in his throat and then turned to his right-east. He slipped sinuously between two rocks. Jake, now feeling at least a tickle of hope, mounted up and followed.

SIX

They hadn't gone far before Jake realized Oy was following an actual path that wound through the hilly, rocky, arid land on this side of the river. He began to see signs of technology: a cast-off, rusty electrical coil, something that looked like an ancient circuit-board poking out of the sand, tiny shards and shatters of glass. In the black moonlight-created shadow of a large boulder, he spied what looked like a whole bottle. He dismounted, picked it up, poured out God knew how many decades (or centuries) of accumulated sand, and looked at it. Written on the side in raised letters was a word he recognized: Nozz-A-La.

"The drink of finer bumhugs everywhere," Jake murmured, and put the bottle down again. Beside it was a crumpled-up cigarette pack. He smoothed it out, revealing a picture of a red-lipped woman wearing a jaunty red hat. She was holding a cigarette between two glamorously long fingers, PARTI appeared to be the brand name.

Oy, meanwhile, was standing ten or twelve yards farther along and looking back at him over one low shoulder.

"Okay," Jake said. "I'm coming."

Other paths joined the one they were on, and Jake realized this was a continuation of the East Road. He could see only a few scattered bootprints and smaller, deeper footprints. These were in places guarded by high rocks-wayside coves the prevailing winds didn't often reach. He guessed the bootprints were Slightman's, the deep footprints Andy's. There were no others. But there would be, and not many days from now, either. The prints of the Wolves' gray horses, coming out of the east. They would also be deep prints, Jake reckoned. Deep like Andy's.

Up ahead, the path breasted the top of a hill. On either side were fantastically misshapen organ-pipe cactuses with great thick barrel arms that seemed to point every which way. Oy was standing there, looking down at something, and once more seeming to grin. As Jake approached him, he could smell the cactus-plants. The odor was bitter and tangy. It reminded him of his father's martinis.

He sat astride his pony beside Oy, looking down. At the bottom of the hill on the right was a shattered concrete driveway. A sliding gate had been frozen half-open ages ago, probably long before the Wolves started raiding the borderland Callas for children. Beyond it was a building with a curved metal roof. Small windows lined the side Jake could see, and his heart lifted at the sight of the steady white glow that came through them. Not 'seners, and not lightbulbs, either (what Roland called "sparklights"). Only fluorescents threw that kind of white light. In his New York life, fluorescent lights made him think mostly of unhappy, boring things: giant stores where everything was always on sale and you could never find what you wanted, sleepy afternoons at school when the teacher droned on and on about the trade routes of ancient China or the mineral deposits of Peru and rain poured endlessly down outside and it seemed the Closing Bell would never ring, doctors' offices where you always wound up sitting on a tissue-covered exam table in your underpants, cold and embarrassed and somehow positive that you would be getting a shot.

Tonight, though, those lights cheered him up.

"Good boy!" he told the bumbler.

Instead of responding as he usually did, by repeating his name, Oy looked past Jake and commenced a low growl. At the same moment the pony shifted and gave a nervous whinny. Jake reined him, realizing that bitter (but not entirely unpleasant) smell of gin and juniper had gotten stronger. He looked around and saw two spiny barrels of the cactus-tangle on his right swiveling slowly and blindly toward him. There was a faint grinding sound, and dribbles of white sap were running down the cactus's central barrel. The needles on the arms swinging toward Jake looked long and wicked in the moonlight. The thing had smelled him, and it was hungry.

"Come on," he told Oy, and booted the pony's sides lightly. The pony needed no further urging. It hurried downhill, not quite trotting, toward the building with the fluorescent lights. Oy gave the moving cactus a final mistrustful look, then followed them.

SEVEN

Jake reached the driveway and stopped. About fifty yards farther down the road (it was now very definitely a road, or had been once upon a time), train-tracks crossed and then ran on toward the Devar-Tete Whye, where a low bridge took them across. The folken called that bridge "the causeway." The older folken, Callahan had told them, called it the devil's causeway.

"The trains that bring the roont ones back from Thunderclap come on those tracks," he murmured to Oy. And did he feel the tug of the Beam? Jake was sure he did. He had an idea that when they left Calla Bryn Sturgis-if they left Calla Bryn Sturgis-it would be along those tracks.

He stood where he was a moment longer, feet out of the stirrups, then headed the pony up the crumbling driveway toward the building. To Jake it looked like a Quonset hut on a military base. Oy, with his short legs, was having hard going on the broken-up surface. That busted-up paving would be dangerous for his horse, too. Once the frozen gate was behind them, he dismounted and looked for a place to tether his mount. There were bushes close by, but something told him they were too close. Too visible. He led the pony out onto the hardpan, stopped, and looked around at Oy. "Stay!"

"Stay! Oy! Ake!"

Jake found more bushes behind a pile of boulders like a strew of huge and eroded toy blocks. Here he felt satisified enough to tether the pony. Once it was done, he stroked the long, velvety muzzle. "Not long," he said. "Can you be good?"

The pony blew through his nose and appeared to nod. Which meant exactly nothing, Jake knew. And it was probably a needless precaution, anyway. Still, better safe than sorry. He went back to the driveway and bent to scoop the bumbler up. As soon as he straightened, a row of brilliant lights flashed on, pinning him like a bug on a microscope stage. Holding Oy in the curve of one arm, Jake raised the other to shield his eyes. Oy whined and blinked.

There was no warning shout, no stern request for identification, only the faint snuffle of the breeze. The lights were turned on by motion-sensors, Jake guessed. What came next? Machine-gun fire directed by dipolar computers? A scurry of small but deadly robots like those Roland, Eddie, and Susannah had dispatched in the clearing where the Beam they were following had begun? Maybe a big net dropping from overhead, like in this jungle movie he'd seen once on TV?

Jake looked up. There was no net. No machine-guns, either. He started walking forward again, picking his way around the deepest of the potholes and jumping over a washout. Beyond this latter, the driveway was tilted and cracked but mostly whole. "You can get down now," he told Oy. "Boy, you're heavy. Watch out or I'll have to stick you in Weight Watchers."

He looked straight ahead, squinting and shielding his eyes from the fierce glare. The lights were in a row running just beneath the Quonset's curved roof. They threw his shadow out behind him, long and black. He saw rock-cat corpses, two on his left and two more on his right. Three of them were little more than skeletons. The fourth was in a high state of decomposition, but Jake could see a hole that looked too big for a bullet. He thought it had been made by a bah-bolt. The idea was comforting. No weapons of super-science at work here. Still, he was crazy not to be hightailing it back toward the river and the Calla beyond it. Wasn't he? "Crazy," he said.

"Razy," Oy said, once more padding along at Jake's heel.

A minute later they reached the door of the hut. Above it, on a rusting steel plate, was this:

On the door itself, now hanging crooked by only two screws, was another sign. A joke? Some sort of nickname? Jake thought it might be a little of both. The letters were choked with rust and eroded by God knew how many years of blowing sand and grit, but he could still read them:

EIGHT

Jake expected the door to be locked and wasn't disappointed. The lever handle moved up and down only the tiniest bit. He guessed that when it had been new, there'd been no give in it at all. To the left of the door was a rusty steel panel with a button and a speaker grille. Beneath it was the word VERBAL. Jake reached for the button, and suddenly the lights lining the top of the building went out, leaving him in what at first seemed like utter darkness. They're on a timer, he thought, waiting for his eyes to adjust. A pretty short one. Or maybe they re just getting tired, like everything else the Old People left behind.

His eyes readapted to the moonlight and he could see the entry-box again. He had a pretty good idea of what the verbal entry code must be. He pushed the button.

"WELCOME TO ARC QUADRANT OUTPOST 16," said a voice. Jake jumped back, stifling a cry. He had expected a voice, but not one so eerily like that of Blaine the Mono. He almost expected it to drop into a John Wayne drawl and call him little trailhand. "THIS IS A MEDIUM SECURITY OUTPOST. PLEASE GIVE THE VERBAL ENTRY CODE. YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS. NINE… EIGHT…"

"Nineteen," Jake said.

"INCORRECT ENTRY CODE. YOU MAY RETRY ONCE. FIVE… FOUR… THREE…"

"Ninety-nine," Jake said.

"THANKYOU."

The door clicked open.

NINE

Jake and Oy walked into a room that reminded him of the vast control-area Roland had carried him through beneath the city of Lud, as they had followed the steel ball which had guided them to Blaine's cradle. This room was smaller, of course, but many of the dials and panels looked the same. There were chairs at some of the consoles, the kind that would roll along the floor so that the people who worked here could move from place to place without getting to their feet. There was a steady sigh of fresh air, but Jake could hear occasional rough rattling sounds from the machinery driving it. And while three-quarters of the panels were lighted, he could see a good many that were dark. Old and tired: he had been right about that. In one corner was a grinning skeleton in the remains of a brown khaki uniform.

On one side of the room was a bank of TV monitors. They reminded Jake a little bit of his father's study at home, although father had had only three screens-one for each network- and here there were… he counted. Thirty. Three of them were fuzzy, showing pictures he couldn't really make out. Two were rolling rapidly up and up, as if the vertical hold had fritzed out. Four were entirely dark. The other twenty-one were projecting pictures, and Jake looked at these with growing wonder. Halfa dozen showed various expanses of desert, including the hilltop guarded by the two misshapen cactuses. Two more showed the outpost-the Dogan-from behind and from the driveway side. Under these were three screens showing the Dogan's interior. One showed a room that looked like a galley or kitchen. The second showed a small bunkhouse that looked equipped to sleep eight (in one of the bunks, an upper, Jake spied another skeleton). The third inside-the-Dogan screen presented this room, from a high angle. Jake could see himself and Oy. There was a screen with a stretch of the railroad tracks on it, and one showing the Little Whye from this side, moonstruck and beautiful. On the far right was the causeway with the train-tracks crossing it.

It was the images on the other eight operating screens that astounded Jake. One showed Took's General Store, now dark and deserted, closed up till daylight. One showed the Pavilion. Two showed the Calla high street. Another showed Our Lady of Serenity Church, and one showed the living room of the rectory… inside the rectory! Jake could actually see the Pere's cat, Snugglebutt, lying asleep on the hearth. The other two showed angles of what Jake assumed was the Manni village (he had not been there).

Where in hell's name are the cameras? Jake wondered. How come nobody sees them?

Because they were too small, he supposed. And because they'd been hidden. Smile, you're on Candid Camera.

But the church… the rectory… those were buildings that hadn't even existed in the Calla until a few years previous. And inside? Inside the rectory? Who had put a camera there, and when?

Jake didn't know when, but he had a terrible idea that he knew who. Thank God they'd done most of their palavering on the porch, or outside on the lawn. But still, how much must the Wolves-or their masters-know? How much had the infernal machines of this place, the infernal fucking machines of this place, recorded?

And transmitted?

Jake felt pain in his hands and realized they were tightly clenched, the nails biting into his palms. He opened them with an effort. He kept expecting the voice from the speaker-grille-the voice so much like Blaine's-to challenge him, ask him what he was doing here. But it was mostly silent in this room of not-quite-ruin; no sounds but the low hum of the equipment and the occasionally raspy whoosh of the air-exchangers. He looked over his shoulder at the door and saw it had closed behind him on a pneumatic hinge. He wasn't worried about that; from this side it would probably open easily. If it didn't, good old ninety-nine would get him out again. He remembered introducing himself to the folken that first night in the Pavilion, a night that already seemed a long time ago. I am Jake Chambers, son of Elmer, the Line of Eld, he had told them. The ka-tet of the Ninety and Nine. Why had he said that? He didn't know. All he knew was that things kept showing up again. In school, Ms. Avery had read them a poem called "The Second Coming," by William Buder Yeats. There had been something in it about a hawk turning and turning in a widening gyre, which was- according to Ms. Avery-a kind of circle. But here things were in a spiral, not a circle. For the Ka-Tet of Nineteen (or of the Ninety and Nine, Jake had an idea they were really the same), things were tightening up even as the world around them grew old, grew loose, shut down, shed pieces of itself. It was like being in the cyclone which had carried Dorothy off to the Land of Oz, where witches were real and bumhugs ruled. To Jake's heart it made perfect sense that they should be seeing the same things over and over, and more and more often, because-

Movement on one of the screens caught his eye. He looked at it and saw Benny's Da' and Andy the Messenger Robot coming over the hilltop guarded by the cactus sentries. As he watched, the spiny barrel arms swung inward to block the road-and, perhaps, impale the prey. Andy, however, had no reason to fear cactus spines. He swung an arm and broke one of the barrels off halfway down its length. It fell into the dust, spurting white goo. Maybe it wasn't sap at all, Jake thought. Maybe it was blood. In any case, the cactus on the other side swiveled away in a hurry. Andy and Ben Slightman stopped for a moment, perhaps to discuss this. The screen's resolution wasn't clear enough to show if the human's mouth was moving or not.

Jake was seized by an awful, throat-closing panic. His body suddenly seemed too heavy, as if it were being tugged by the gravity of a giant planet like Jupiter or Saturn. He couldn't breathe; his chest lay perfecdy flat. This is what Goldilocks would have felt like, he thought in a faint and distant way, if she had awakened in the little bed that was just right to hear the Three Bears coming back in downstairs. He hadn't eaten the porridge, he hadn't broken Baby Bear's chair, but he now knew too many secrets. They boiled down to one secret. One monstrous secret.

Now they were coming down the road. Coming to the Dogan.

Oy was looking up at him anxiously, his long neck stretched to the max, but Jake could barely see him. Black flowers were blooming in front of his eyes. Soon he would faint. They would find him stretched out here on the floor. Oy might try to protect him, but if Andy didn't take care of the bumbler, Ben Slightman would. There were four dead rock-cats out there and Benny's Da' had dispatched at least one of them with his trusty bah. One small barking billy-bumbler would be no problem for him. Would you be so cowardly, then? Roland asked inside his head. But why would they kill such a coward as you? Why would they not just send you west with the broken ones who have forgotten the faces of their fathers?

That brought him back. Most of the way, at least. He took a huge breath, yanking in air until the bottoms of his lungs hurt. He let it out in an explosive whoosh. Then he slapped himself across the face, good and hard.

"Ake! " Oy cried in a reproving-almost shocked-voice.

"S'okay," Jake said. He looked at the monitors showing the galley and the bunkroom and decided on the latter. There was nothing to hide behind or under in the galley. There might be a closet, but what if there wasn't? He'd be screwed.

"Oy, to me," he said, and crossed the humming room beneath the bright white lights.

TEN

The bunkroom held the ghostly aroma of ancient spices: cinnamon and clove. Jake wondered-in a distracted, back-of-the-mind way-if the tombs beneath the Pyramids had smelled this way when the first explorers had broken into them. From the upper bunk in the corner, the reclining skeleton grinned at him, as if in welcome. Feel like a nap, little trailhand? I'm taking a long one! It's ribcage shimmered with silky overlays of spiderweb, and Jake wondered in that same distracted way how many generations of spider-babies had been born in that empty cavity. On another pillow lay a jawbone, prodding a ghostly, ghastly memory from the back of the boy's mind. Once, in a world where he had died, the gunslinger had found a bone like that. And used it

The forefront of his mind pounded with two cold questions and one even colder resolve. The questions were how long it would take them to get here and whether or not they would discover his pony. If Slightman had been riding a horse of his own, Jake was sure the amiable little pony would have whinnied a greeting already. Luckily, Slightman was on foot, as he had been last time. Jake would have come on foot himself, had he known his goal was less than a mile east of the river. Of course, when he'd snuck away from the Rocking B, he hadn't even been sure that he had a goal.

The resolve was to kill both the tin-man and the flesh-and-blood man if he was discovered. If he could, that was. Andy might be tough, but those bulging blue-glass eyes looked like a weak point. If he could blind him-

There'll be water if God wills it, said the gunslinger who now always lived in his head, for good and ill. Your job now is to hide if you can. Where?

Not in the bunks. All of them were visible in the monitor covering this room and there was no way he could impersonate a skeleton. Under one of the two bunk-stacks at the rear? Risky, but it would serve… unless…

Jake spied another door. He sprang forward, depressed the lever-handle, and pulled the door open. It was a closet, and closets made fine hiding places, but this one was filled with jumbles of dusty electronic equipment, top to bottom. Some of it fell out.

"Beans!" he whispered in a low, urgent voice. He picked up what had fallen, tossed it high and low, then shut the closet door again. Okay, it would have to be under one of the beds-

"WELCOME TO ARC QUADRANT OUTPOST 16," boomed the recorded voice. Jake flinched, and saw another door, this one to his left and standing partway open. Try the door or squeeze under one of the two tiers of bunks at the rear of the room? He had time to try one bolthole or the other, but not both. "THIS IS A MEDIUM SECURITY OUTPOST."

Jake went for the door, and it was just as well he went when he did, because Slightman didn't let the recording finish its spiel. "Ninety-nine," came his voice from the loudspeakers, and the recording thanked him.

It was another closet, this one empty except for two or three moldering shirts in one corner and a dust-caked poncho slumped on a hook. The air was almost as dusty as the poncho, and Oy uttered three fast, delicate sneezes as he padded in.

Jake dropped to one knee and put an arm around Oy's slender neck. "No more of that unless you want to get us both killed," he said. "You be quiet, Oy."

"Kiyit Oy," the bumbler whispered back, and winked. Jake reached up and pulled the door back to within two inches of shut, as it had been before. He hoped.

ELEVEN

He could hear them quite clearly-too clearly. Jake realized there were mikes and speakers all over this place. The idea did nothing for his peace of mind. Because if he and Oy could hear them…

It was the cactuses they were talking about, or rather that Slightman was talking about. He called them boom-flurry, and wanted to know what had gotten them all fashed.

"Almost certainly more rock-cats, sai," Andy said in his complacent, slightly prissy voice. Eddie said Andy reminded him of a robot named C3PO in Star Wars, a movie to which Jake had been looking forward. He had missed it by less than a month. "It's their mating season, you know."

"Piss on that," Slightman said. "Are you telling me boom-flurry don't know rock-cats from something they can actually catch and eat? Someone's been out here, I tell you. And not long since."

A cold thought slipped into Jake's mind: had the floor of the Dogan been dusty? He'd been too busy gawking at the control panels and TV monitors to notice. If he and Oy had left tracks, those two might have noticed already. They might only be pretending to have a conversation about the cactuses while they actually crept toward the bunkroom door.

Jake took the Ruger out of the docker's clutch and held it in his right hand with his thumb on the safety.

"A guilty conscience doth make cowards of us all," Andy said in his complacent, just-thought-you'd-like-to-know voice. "That's my free adaptation of a-"

"Shut up, you bag of bolts and wires," Slightman snarled. "I-" Then he screamed. Jake felt Oy stiffen against him, felt his fur begin to rise. The bumbler started to growl. Jake slipped a hand around his snout.

"Let go!" Slightman cried out. "Let go of me!"

"Of course, sai Slightman," Andy said, now sounding solicitous. "I only pressed a small nerve in your elbow, you know. There would be no lasting damage unless I applied at least twenty foot-pounds of pressure."

"Why in the hell would you do that?" Slightman sounded injured, almost whiny. "En't I doing all you could want, and more? En't I risking my life for my boy?"

"Not to mention a few little extras," Andy said silkily. "Your spectacles… the music machine you keep deep down in your saddlebag… and, of course-"

"You know why I'm doing it and what'd happen to me if I was found out," Slightman said. The whine had gone out of his voice. Now he sounded dignified and a little weary. Jake listened to that tone with growing dismay. If he got out of this and had to squeal on Benny's Da', he wanted to squeal on a villain. "Yar, I've taken a few little extras, you say true, I say thankya. Glasses, so I can see better to betray the people I've known all my life. A music machine so I won't have to hear the conscience you prate about so easy and can get to sleep at night. Then you pinch something in my arm that makes me feel like my by-Riza eyes are going to fall right out of my by-Riza head.'"

"I allow it from the rest of them," Andy said, and now his voice had changed. Jake once more thought of Blaine, and once more his dismay grew. What if Tian Jaffords heard this voice? What if Vaughn Eisenhart heard it? Overholser? The rest of the folken? "They heap contumely on my head like hot coals and never do I raise a word o' protest, let alone a hand. 'Go here, Andy. Go there, Andy. Stop yer foolish singing, Andy. Stuff yer prattle. Don't tell us of the future, because we don't want to hear it.' So I don't, except of the Wolves, because they'd hear what makes em sad and I'd tell em, yes I would; to me each tear's a drop of gold. 'You're nobbut a stupid pile of lights n wires,' they say. 'Tell us the weather, sing the babby to sleep, then get't'hell out o' here.' And I allow it. Foolish Andy am I, every child's toy and always fair game for a tongue-whipping. But I won't take a tongue-whipping from you, sai. You hope to have a future in the Calla after the Wolves are done with it for another few years, don't you?"

"You know I do," Slightman said, so low Jake could barely hear him. "And I deserve it."

"You and your son, both say thankya, passing your days in the Calla, both say commala! And that can happen, but it depends on more than the death of the outworlders. It depends on my silence. If you want it, I demand respect."

"That's absurd," Slightman said after a brief pause. From his place in the closet, Jake agreed wholeheartedly. A robot demanding respect was absurd. But so was a giant bear patrolling an empty forest, a Morlock thug trying to unravel the secrets of dipolar computers, or a train that lived only to hear and solve new riddles. "And besides, hear me I beg, how can I respect you when I don't even respect myself?"

There was a mechanical click in response to this, very loud. Jake had heard Blaine make a similar sound when he-or it- had felt the absurd closing in, threatening to fry his logic circuits. Then Andy said: "No answer, nineteen. Connect and report, sai Slightman. Let's have done with this."

"All right."

There were thirty or forty seconds' worth of keyboard-clatter, then a high, warbling whistle that made Jake wince and Oy whine far back in his throat. Jake had never heard a sound quite like it; he was from the New York of 1977, and the word modem would have meant nothing to him.

The shriek cut off abruptly. There was a moment's silence. Then: "THIS IS ALGUL SIENTO. FINLI O' TEGO HERE. PLEASE GIVE YOUR PASSWORD. YOU HAVE TEN SEC-"

"Saturday," Slightman replied, and Jake frowned. Had he ever heard that happy weekend word on this side? He didn't think so.

"THANK YOU. ALGUL SIENTO ACKNOWLEDGES. WE ARE ONLINE." There was another brief, shrieking whistle. Then: "REPORT, SATURDAY."

Slightman told of watching Roland and "the younger one" going up to the Cave of the Voices, where there was now some sort of door, very likely conjured by the Manni. He said he'd used the far-seer and thus gotten a very good look-

"Telescope," Andy said. He had reverted to his slightly prissy, complacent voice. "Such are called telescopes."

"Would you care to make my report, Andy?" Slightman inquired with cold sarcasm.

"Cry pardon," Andy said in a long-suffering voice. "Cry pardon, cry pardon, go on, go on, as ye will."

There was a pause. Jake could imagine Slightman glaring at the robot, the glare robbed of its ferocity by the way the foreman would have to crane his neck in order to deliver it. Finally he went on.

"They left their horses below and walked up. They carried a pink sack which they passed from hand to hand, as if 'twere heavy. Whatever was in it had square edges; I could make that out through the telescope far-seer. May I offer two guesses?"

"YES."

"First, they might have been putting two or three of the Pere's most valuable books in safekeeping. If that's the case, a Wolf should be sent to destroy them after the main mission's accomplished."

"WHY?" The voice was perfectiy cold. Not a human being's voice, Jake was sure of that. The sound of it made him feel weak and afraid.

"Why, as an example, do it please ya," Slightman said, as if this should have been obvious. "As an example to the priest!"

"CALLAHAN WILL VERY SOON BE BEYOND EXAMPLES," the voice said. "WHAT IS YOUR OTHER GUESS?"

When Slightman spoke again, he sounded shaken. Jake hoped the traitor son of a bitch was shaken. He was protecting his son, sure, his only son, but why he thought that gave him the right-

"It may have been maps," Slightman said. "I've thought long and long that a man who has books is apt to have maps. He may have given em maps of the Eastern Regions leading into Thunderclap-they haven't been shy about saying that's where they plan to head next. If it is maps they took up there, much good may they do em, even if they live. Next year north'll be east, and likely the year after it'll swap places with south."

In the dusty darkness of the closet Jake could suddenly see Andy watching Slightman make his report. Andy's blue electric eyes were flashing. Slightman didn't know-no one in the Calla knew-but that rapid flashing was the way DNF-44821-V-63 expressed humor. He was, in fact, laughing at Slightman.

Because he knows better, Jake thought. Because he knows what's really in that bag. Bet a box of cookies that he does.

Could he be so sure of that? Was it possible to use the touch on a robot?

If it can think, the gunslinger in his head spoke up, then you can touch it.

Well… maybe.

"Whatever it was, it's a damn good indication they really do plan to take the kids into the arroyos," Slightman was saying. "Not that they'd put em in that cave."

"No, no, not that cave," Andy said, and although his voice was as prissy-serious as ever, Jake could imagine his blue eyes flashing even faster. Almost stuttering, in fact. "Too many voices in that cave, they'd scare the children! Yer-bugger!"

DNF-44821-V-63, Messenger Robot. Messenger! You could accuse Slightman of treachery, but how could anyone accuse Andy of it? What he did, what he was, had been stamped on his chest for the whole world to see. There it had been, in front of all of them. Gods!

Benny's Da', meanwhile, was plodding stolidly on with his report to Finli O' Tego, who was in some place called Algul Siento.

"The mine he showed us on the map the Taverys drew is the Gloria, and the Gloria en't but a mile off from the Cave of the Voices. But the bastard's trig. Can I give another guess?"

"YES."

"The arroyo that leads to the Gloria Mine splits off to the south about a quarter-mile in. There's another old mine at the end of the spur. The Redbird Two, it's called. Their dinh is telling folks he means to put the kids in the Gloria, and I think he'll tell em the same at the meeting he's going to call later this week, the one where he asks leave to stand against the Wolves. But I b'lieve that when the time comes, he'll stick em in the Redbird instead. He'll have the Sisters of Oriza standing guard-in front and up above, as well-and ye'd do well not to underestimate those ladies."

"HOW MANY?"

"I think five, if he puts Sarey Adams among em. Plus some men with bahs. He'll have the brownie throwing with em, kennit, and I hear she's good. Maybe best of all. But one way or the other, we know where the kids are going to be. Putting them in such a place is a mistake, but he don't know it. He's dangerous, but grown old in his thinking. Probably such a strategy has worked for him before."

And it had, of course. In Eyebolt Canyon, against Latigo's men.

"The important thing now is finding out where he and the boy and the younger man are going to be when the Wolves come. He may tell at the meeting. If he don't, he may tell Eisenhart afterward."

"OR OVERHOLSER?"

"No. Eisenhart will stand with him. Overholser won't."

"YOU MUST FIND OUT WHERE THEY'LL BE."

"I know," Slightman said. "We'll find out, Andy and I, and then make one more trip to this unblessed place. After that, I swear by the Lady Oriza and the Man Jesus, I've done my part. Now can we get out of here?"

"In a moment, sai," Andy said. "I have my own report to make, you know."

There was another of those long, whistling shrieks. Jake ground his teeth and waited for it to be over, and finally it was. Finli I' Tego signed off.

"Are we done?" Slightman asked.

"Unless you have some reason to linger, I believe we are," Andy said.

"Does anything in here seem different to you?" Slightman asked suddenly, and Jake felt his blood turn cold.

"No," Andy said, "but I have great respect for human intuition. Are you having intuition, sai?"

There was a pause that seemed to go on for at least a full minute, although Jake knew it must have been much shorter than that. He held Oy's head against his thigh and waited.

"No," Slightman said at last. "Guess I'm just getting jumpy, now that it's close. God, I wish it was over! I hate this!"

"You're doing the right thing, sai." Jake didn't know about Slightman, but Andy's plummily sympathetic tone made him feel like gnashing his teeth. "The only thing, really. 'Tisn't yourfault that you're father to the only mateless twin in Calla Bryn Sturgis, is it? I know a song that makes this point in particularly moving fashion. Perhaps you'd like to hear-"

"Shut up!" Slightman cried in a choked voice. "Shut up, you mechanical devil! I've sold my goddam soul, isn't that enough for you? Must I be made sport of, as well?"

"If I've offended, I apologize from the bottom of my admittedly hypothetical heart," Andy said. "In other words, I cry your pardon." Sounding sincere. Sounding as though he meant every word. Sounding as though butter wouldn't melt. Yet Jake had no doubt that Andy's eyes were flashing out in gales of silent blue laughter.

TWELVE

The conspirators left. There was an odd, meaningless jingle of melody from the overhead speakers (meaningless to Jake, at least), and then silence. He waited for them to discover his pony, come back, search for him, find him, kill him. When he had counted to a hundred and twenty and they hadn't returned to the Dogan, he got to his feet (the overdose of adrenaline in his system left him feeling as stiff as an old man) and went back into the control room. He was just in time to see the motion-sensor lights in front of the place switch off. He looked at the monitor showing the top of the rise and saw the Dogan's most recent visitors walking between the boom-flurry. This time the cactuses didn't move. They had apparently learned their lesson. Jake watched Slightman and Andy go, bitterly amused by the difference in their heights. Whenever his father saw such a Mutt-and-Jeff duo on the street, he inevitably said Put em in vaudeville. It was about as close to a joke as Elmer Chambers could get.

When this particular duo was out of sight, Jake looked down at the floor. No dust, of course. No dust and no tracks. He should have seen that when he came in. Certainly Roland would have seen that. Roland would have seen everything.

Jake wanted to leave but made himself wait. If they saw the motion-lights glare back on behind them, they'd probably assume it was a rock-cat (or maybe what Benny called "an armydillo"), but probably wasn't good enough. To pass the time, he looked at the various control panels, many of which had the LaMerk Industries name on them. Yet he also saw the familiar GE and IBM logos, plus one he didn't know-Microsoft. All of these latter gadgets were stamped made in usa. The LaMerk products bore no such mark.

He was pretty sure some of the keyboards he saw-there were at least two dozen-controlled computers. What other gadgetry was there? How much was still up and running? Were there weapons stored here? He somehow thought the answer to this last question was no-if there had been weapons, they had no doubt been decommissioned or appropriated, very likely by Andy the Messenger Robot (Many Other Functions).

At last he decided it was safe to leave… if, that was, he was extremely careful, rode slowly back to the river, and took pains to approach the Rocking B the back way. He was nearly to the door when another question occurred to him. Was there a record of his and Oy's visit to the Dogan? Were they on videotape somewhere? He looked at the operating TV screens, sparing his longest stare for the one showing the control room. He and Oy were on it again. From the camera's high angle, anyone in the room would have to be in that picture.

Let it go, Jake, the gunslinger in his head advised. There's nothing you can do about it, so just let it go. If you try poking and prying, you're apt to leave sign. You might even set off an alarm.

The idea of tripping an alarm convinced him. He picked up Oy-as much for comfort as anything else-and got the hell out. His pony was exacdy where Jake had left him, cropping dreamily at the bushes in the moonlight. There were no tracks in the hardpan… but, Jake saw, he wasn't leaving any himself. Andy would have broken through the crusty surface enough to leave tracks, but not him. He wasn't heavy enough. Probably Benny's Da' wasn't, either.

Quit it. If they'd smelled you, they would have come back.

Jake supposed that was true, but he still felt more than a little like Goldilocks tiptoeing away from the house of the Three Bears. He led his pony back to the desert road, then put on the duster and slipped Oy into the wide front pocket. As he mounted up, he thumped the bumbler a fairly good one on the saddle-horn.

"Ouch, Ake!" Oy said.

"Quit it, ya baby," Jake said, turning his pony back in the direction of the river. "Gotta be quiet, now."

"Kiyit," Oy agreed, and gave him a wink. Jake worked his fingers down through the bumbler's heavy fur and scratched the place Oy liked the best. Oy closed his eyes, stretched his neck to an almost comical length, and grinned.

When they got back to the river, Jake dismounted and peered over a boulder in both directions. He saw nothing, but his heart was in his throat all the way across to the other side. He kept trying to think what he would say if Benny's Da' hailed him and asked him what he was doing out here in the middle of the night. Nothing came. In English class, he'd almost always gotten As on his creative-writing assignments, but now he was discovering that fear and invention did not mix. If Benny's Da' hailed him, Jake would be caught. It was as simple as that.

There was no hail-not crossing the river, not going back to the Rocking B, not unsaddling the horse and rubbing him down. The world was silent, and that was just fine with Jake.

THIRTEEN

Once Jake was back on his pallet and pulling the covers to his chin, Oy jumped up on Benny's bed and lay down, nose once more under his tail. Benny made a deep-sleep muttering sound, reached out, and gave the bumbler's flank a single stroke.

Jake lay looking at the sleeping boy, troubled. He liked Benny-his openness, his appetite for fun, his willingness to work hard when there were chores that needed doing. He liked Benny's yodeling laugh when something struck him funny, and the way they were evenly matched in so many things, and-

And until tonight, Jake had liked Benny's Da', too.

He tried to imagine how Benny would look at him when he found out that (a) his father was a traitor and (b) his friend had squealed on him. Jake thought he could bear anger. It was hurt that would be hard.

You think hurt's all it'll be? Simple hurt? You better think again. There aren't many props under Benny Slightman's world, and this is going to knock them all out from under him. Every single one.

Not my fault that his father's a spy and a traitor.

But it wasn't Benny's, either. If you asked Slightman, he'd probably say it wasn't even his fault, that he'd been forced into it. Jake guessed that was almost true. Completely true, if you looked at things with a father's eye. What was it that the Calla's twins made and the Wolves needed? Something in their brains, very likely. Some sort of enzyme or secretion not produced by singleton children; maybe the enzyme or secretion that created the supposed phenomenon of "twin telepathy." Whatever it was, they could take it from Benny Slightman, because Benny Slightman only looked like a singleton. Had his sister died? Well, that was tough titty, wasn't it? Very tough titty, especially for the father who loved the only one left. Who couldn't bear to let him go.

Suppose Roland kills him? How will Benny look at you then?

Once, in another life, Roland had promised to take care of Jake Chambers and then let him drop into the darkness. Jake had thought there could be no worse betrayal than that. Now he wasn't so sure. No, not so sure at all. These unhappy thoughts kept him awake for a long time. Finally, half an hour or so before the first hint of dawn touched the horizon, he fell into a thin and troubled sleep.

ONE

"We are ka-tet," said the gunslinger. "We are one from many." He saw Callahan's doubtful look-it was impossible to miss- and nodded. "Yes, Pere, you're one of us. I don't know for how long, but I know it's so. And so do my friends."

Jake nodded. So did Eddie and Susannah. They were in the Pavilion today; after hearing Jake's story, Roland no longer wanted to meet at the rectory-house, not even in the back yard. He thought it all too likely that Slightman or Andy- maybe even some other as yet unsuspected friend of the Wolves-had placed listening devices as well as cameras there. Overhead the sky was gray, threatening rain, but the weather remained remarkably warm for so late in the season. Some civic-minded ladies or gents had raked away the fallen leaves in a wide circle around the stage where Roland and his friends had introduced themselves not so long ago, and the grass beneath was as green as summer. There were folken flying kites, couples promenading hand in hand, two or three outdoor tradesmen keeping one eye out for customers and the other on the low-bellied clouds overhead. On the bandstand, the group of musicians who had played them into Calla Bryn Sturgis with such brio were practicing a few new tunes. On two or three occasions, townsfolk had started toward Roland and his friends, wanting to pass a little time, and each time it happened, Roland shook his head in an unsmiling way that turned them around in a hurry. The time for so-good-to-meet-you politics had passed. They were almost down to what Susannah called the real nitty-gritty.

Roland said, "In four days comes the meeting, this time I think of the entire town, not just the men."

"Damn well told it ought to be the whole town," Susannah said. "If you're counting on the ladies to throw the dish and make up for all the guns we don't have, I don't think it's too much to let em into the damn hall."

"Won't be in the Gathering Hall, if it's everyone," Callahan said. "There won't be room enough. We'll light the torches and have it right out here."

"And if it rains?" Eddie asked.

"If it rains, people will get wet," Callahan said, and shrugged.

"Four days to the meeting and nine to the Wolves," Roland said. "This will very likely be our last chance to palaver as we are now-sitting down, with our heads clear-until this is over. We won't be here long, so let's make it count." He held out his hands. Jake took one, Susannah the other. In a moment all five were joined in a little circle, hand to hand. "Do we see each other?"

"See you very well," Jake said.

"Very well, Roland," said Eddie.

"Clear as day, sug," Susannah agreed, smiling.

Oy, who was sniffing in the grass nearby, said nothing, but he did look around and tip a wink.

"Pere?" Roland asked.

"I see and hear you very well," Callahan agreed with a small smile, "and I'm glad to be included. So far, at least."

TWO

Roland, Eddie, and Susannah had heard most of Jake's tale; Jake and Susannah had heard most of Roland's and Eddie's. Now Callahan got both-what he later called "the double feature." He listened with his eyes wide and his mouth frequently agape. He crossed himself when Jake told of hiding in the closet. To Eddie the Pere said, "You didn't mean it about killing the wives and children, of course? That was just a bluff?"

Eddie looked up at the heavy sky, considering this with a faint smile. Then he looked back at Callahan. "Roland tells me that for a guy who doesn't want to be called Father, you have taken some very Fatherly stands just lately."

"If you're speaking about the idea of terminating your wife's pregnancy-"

Eddie raised a hand. "Let's say I'm not speaking of any one thing in particular. It's just that we've got a job to do here, and we need you to help us do it. The last thing we need is to get sidetracked by a lot of your old Catholic blather. So let's just say yes, I was bluffing, and move on. Will that serve? Father?"

Eddie's smile had grown strained and exasperated. There were bright smudges of color on his cheekbones. Callahan considered the look of him with great care, and then nodded. "Yes," he said. "You were bluffing. By all means let's leave it at that and move on."

"Good," Eddie said. He looked at Roland.

"The first question is for Susannah," Roland said. "It's a simple one: how are you feeling?"

"Just fine," she replied.

"Say true?"

She nodded. "Say true, say thankya."

"No headaches here?" Roland rubbed above his left temple.

"No. And the jittery feelings I used to get just after sunset, just before dawn-have quit. And look at me!" She ran a hand down the swell of her breasts, to her waist, to her right hip. "I've lost some of the fullness. Roland… I've read that sometimes animals in the wild-carnivores like wildcats, herbivores like deer and rabbits-reabsorb their babies if the conditions to have them are adverse. You don't suppose…" She trailed off, looking at him hopefully.

Roland wished he could have supported this charming idea, but he couldn't. And withholding the truth within the ka-tet was no longer an option. He shook his head. Susannah's face fell.

"She's been sleeping quietly, so far as I can tell," Eddie said. "No sign of Mia."

"Rosalita says the same," Callahan added.

"You got dat jane watchin me?" Susannah said in a suspiciously Detta-like tone. But she was smiling.

"Every now and then," Callahan admitted.

"Let's leave the subject of Susannah's chap, if we may," Roland said. "We need to speak of the Wolves. Them and little else."

"But Roland-" Eddie began.

Roland held up his hand. "I know how many other matters there are. I know how pressing they are. I also know that if we become distracted, we're apt to die here in Calla Bryn Sturgis, and dead gunslingers can help no one. Nor do they go their course. Do you agree?" His eyes swept them. No one replied. Somewhere in the distance was the sound of many children singing. The sound was high and gleeful and innocent. Something about commala.

"There is one other bit of business that we must address," Roland said. "It involves you, Pere. And what's now called the Doorway Cave. Will you go through that door, and back to your country?"

"Are you kidding?" Callahan's eyes were bright. "A chance to go back, even for a little while? You just say the word."

Roland nodded. "Later today, mayhap you and I will take a little pasear on up there, and I'll see you through the door. You know where the vacant lot is, don't you?"

"Sure. I must have been past it a thousand times, back in my other life."

"And you understand about the zip code?" Eddie asked.

"If Mr. Tower did as you requested, it'll be written at the end of the board fence, Forty-sixth Street side. That was brilliant, by the way."

"Get the number… and get the date, too," Roland said. "We have to keep track of the time over there if we can, Eddie's right about that. Get it and come back. Then, after the meeting in the Pavilion, we'll need you to go through the door again."

"This time to wherever Tower and Deepneau are in New England," Callahan guessed.

"Yes," Roland said.

"If you find them, you'll want to talk mostly to Mr. Deepneau," Jake said. He flushed when they all turned to him, but kept his eyes trained on Callahan's. "Mr. Tower might be stubborn-"

"That's the understatement of the century," Eddie said. "By the time you get there, he'll probably have found twelve used bookstores and God knows how many first editions of Indiana Jones's Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown.'"

"-but Mr. Deepneau will listen," Jake went on.

"Issen, Ake," Oy said, and rolled over onto his back. "Issen kiyet!"

Scratching Oy's belly, Jake said: "If anyone can convince Mr. Tower to do something, it'll be Mr. Deepneau."

"Okay," Callahan replied, nodding. "I hear you well."

The singing children were closer now. Susannah turned but couldn't see them yet; she assumed they were coming up River Street. If so, they'd be in view once they cleared the livery and turned down the high street at Took's General Store. Some of the folken on the porch over there were already getting up to look.

Roland, meanwhile, was studying Eddie with a small smile. "Once when I used the word assume, you told me a saying about it from your world. I'd hear it again, if you remember."

Eddie grinned. "Assume makes an ass out of u and me-is that the one you mean?"

Roland nodded. "It's a good saying. All the same, I'm going to make an assumption now-pound it like a nail-then hang all our hopes of coming out of this alive on it. I don't like it but see no choice. The assumption is that only Ben Slightman and Andy are working against us. That if we take care of them when the time comes, we can move in secrecy."

"Don't kill him," Jake said in a voice almost too low to hear. He had drawn Oy close and was petting the top of his head and his long neck with a kind of compulsive, darting speed. Oy bore this patiently.

"Cry pardon, Jake," Susannah said, leaning forward and tipping a hand behind one ear. "I didn't-"

"Don't kill him!" This time his voice was hoarse and wavering and close to tears. "Don't kill Benny's Da'. Please."

Eddie reached out and cupped the nape of the boy's neck gently. "Jake, Benny Slightman's Da' is willing to send a hundred kids off into Thunderclap with the Wolves, just to spare his own. And you know how they'd come back."

"Yeah, but in his eyes he doesn't have any choice because-"

"His choice could have been to stand with us," Roland said. His voice was dull and dreadful. Almost dead.

"But-"

But what? Jake didn't know. He had been over this and over this and he still didn't know. Sudden tears spilled from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Callahan reached out to touch him. Jake pushed his hand away.

Roland sighed. "We'll do what we can to spare him. That much I promise you. I don't know if it will be a mercy or not- the Slightmans are going to be through in this town, if there's a town left after the end of next week-but perhaps they'll go north or south along the Crescent and start some sort of new life. And Jake, listen: there's no need for Ben Slightman to ever know you overheard Andy and his father last night."

Jake was looking at him with an expression that didn't quite dare to be hope. He didn't care a hill of beans about Slightman the Elder, but he didn't want Benny to know it was him. He supposed that made him a coward, but he didn't want Benny to know. "Really? For sure?"

"Nothing about this is for sure, but-"

Before he could finish, the singing children swept around the corner. Leading them, silver limbs and golden body gleaming mellowly in the day's subdued light, was Andy the Messenger Robot. He was walking backward. In one hand was a bah-bolt wrapped in banners of bright silk. To Susannah he looked like a parade-marshal on the Fourth of July. He waved his baton extravagantly from side to side, leading the children in their song while a reedy bagpipe accompaniment issued from the speakers in his chest and head.

"Holy shit," Eddie said. "It's the Pied Piper of Hamelin."

"Commala-come-one!

Mamma had a son!

Dass-a time 'at Daddy

Had d 'mos 'fun!"

Andy sang this part alone, then pointed his baton at the crowd of children. They joined in boisterously.

"Commala-come-come!

Daddy had one!

Dass-a time 'at Mommy

Had d 'mos' fun!"

Gleeful laughter. There weren't as many kids as Susannah would have thought, given the amount of noise they were putting out. Seeing Andy there at their head, after hearing Jake's story, chilled her heart. At the same time, she felt an angry pulse begin to beat in her throat and her left temple. That he should lead them down the street like this! Like the Pied Piper, Eddie was right-like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Now he pointed his makeshift baton at a pretty girl who looked thirteen or fourteen. Susannah thought she was one of the Anselm kids, from the smallhold just south of Tian Jaffords's place. She sang out the next verse bright and clear to that same heavily rhythmic beat, which was almost (but not quite) a skip-rope chant:

"Commala-come-two!

You know what to do!

Plant the rice commala,

Don't ye be… no... foo'!

Then, as the others joined in again, Susannah realized that the group of children was bigger than she'd thought when they came around the corner, quite a bit bigger. Her ears had told her truer than her eyes, and there was a perfectly good reason for that.

"Commala-come-two! [they sang]

Daddy no foo'!

Mommy plant commala

cause she know jus' what to do!"

The group looked smaller at first glance because so many of the faces were the same-the face of the Anselm girl, for instance, was nearly the face of the boy next to her. Her twin brother. Almost all the kids in Andy's group were twins. Susannah suddenly realized how eerie this was, like all the strange doublings they'd encountered caught in a bottle. Her stomach turned over. And she felt the first twinge of pain above her left eye. Her hand began to rise toward the tender spot.

No, she told herself, I don't feel that. She made the hand go back down. There was no need to rub her brow. No need to rub what didn't hurt.

Andy pointed his baton at a strutting, pudgy little boy who couldn't have been more than eight. He sang the words out in a high and childish treble that made the other kids laugh.

"Commala-come-t'ree!

You know what't 'be

Plant d'rice commalaand d'rice'll make ya free!"

To which the chorus replied:

"Commala-come-t 'ree!

Rice'll make ya free!

When ya plant the rice commala

You know jus' what to be! "

Andy saw Roland's ka-tet and waved his baton cheerily. So did the children… half of whom would come back drooling and roont if the parade-marshal had his way. They would grow to the size of giants, screaming with pain, and then die early.

"Wave back," Roland said, and raised his hand. "Wave back, all of you, for the sake of your fathers."

Eddie flashed Andy a happy, toothy grin. "How you doing, you cheapshit Radio Shack dickweed?" he asked. The voice coming through his grin was low and savage. He gave Andy a double thumbs-up. "How you doing, you robot psycho? Say fine? Say thankya! Say bite my bag!"

Jake burst out laughing at that. They all continued waving and smiling. The children waved and smiled back. Andy also waved. He led his merry band down the high street, chanting Commala-come-four! River's at the door!

"They love him," Callahan said. There was a strange, sick expression of disgust on his face. "Generations of children have loved Andy."

"That," Roland remarked, "is about to change."

FOUR

"Further questions?" Roland asked when Andy and the children were gone. "Ask now if you will. It could be your last chance."

"What about Tian Jaffords?" Callahan asked. "In a very real sense it was Tian who started this. There ought to be a place for him at the finish."

Roland nodded. "I have a job for him. One he and Eddie will do together. Pere, that's a fine privy down below Rosalita's cottage. Tall. Strong."

Callahan raised his eyebrows. "Aye, say thankya. 'Twas Tian and his neighbor, Hugh Anselm, who built it."

"Could you put a lock on the outside of it in the next few days?"

"I could but-"

"If things go well no lock will be necessary, but one can never be sure."

"No," Callahan said. "I suppose one can't. But I can do as you ask."

"What's your plan, sugar?" Susannah asked. She spoke in a quiet, oddly gentle voice.

"There's precious little plan in it. Most times that's all to the good. The most important thing I can tell you is not to believe anything I say once we get up from here, dust off our bottoms, and rejoin the folken. Especially nothing I say when I stand up at the meeting with the feather in my hand. Most of it will be lies." He gave them a smile. Above it, his faded blue eyes were as hard as rocks. "My Da' and Cuthbert's Da' used to have a rule between em: first the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire."

"We're almost there, aren't we?" Susannah asked. "Almost to the shooting."

Roland nodded. "And the shooting will happen so fast and be over so quick that you'll wonder what all the planning and palaver was for, when in the end it always comes down to the same five minutes' worth of blood, pain, and stupidity." He paused, then said: "I always feel sick afterward. Like I did when Bert and I went to see the hanged man."

"I have a question," Jake said.

"Ask it," Roland told him.

"Will we win?"

Roland was quiet for such a long time that Susannah began to be afraid. Then he said: "We know more than they think we know, Far more. They've grown complacent. If Andy and Slightman are the only rats in the woodpile, and if there aren't too many in the Wolfpack-if we don't run out of plates and cartridges-then yes, Jake, son of Elmer. We'll win."

"How many is too many?"

Roland considered, his faded blue eyes looking east. "More than you'd believe," he said at last. "And, I hope, many more than they would."

FIVE

Late that afternoon, Donald Callahan stood in front of the unfound door, trying to concentrate on Second Avenue in the year 1977. What he fixed upon was Chew Chew Mama's, and how sometimes he and George and Lupe Delgado would go there for lunch.

"I ate the beef brisket whenever I could get it," Callahan said, and tried to ignore the shrieking voice of his mother, rising from the cave's dark belly. When he'd first come in with Roland, his eyes had been drawn to the books Calvin Tower had sent through. So many books! Callahan's mostly generous heart grew greedy (and a bit smaller) at the sight of them. His interest didn't last, however-just long enough to pull one at random and see it was The Virginian, by Owen Wister. It was hard to browse when your dead friends and loved ones were shrieking at you and calling you names.

His mother was currendy asking him why he had allowed a vampire, a filthy bloodsucker, to break the cross she had given him. "You was always weak in faith," she said dolorously. "Weak in the faith and strong for the drink. I bet you'd like one right now, wouldn't you?"

Dear God, would he ever. Whiskey. Ancient Age. Callahan felt sweat break on his forehead. His heart was beating double-time. No, triple-time.

"The brisket," he muttered. "With some of that brown mustard splashed on top of it." He could even see the plastic squeeze-botde the mustard came in, and remember the brand name. Plochman's.

"What?" Roland asked from behind him.

"I said I'm ready," Callahan said. "If you're going to do it, for God's love do it now."

Roland cracked open the box. The chimes at once bolted through Callahan's ears, making him remember the low men in their loud cars. His stomach shriveled inside his belly and outraged tears burst from his eyes.

But the door clicked open, and a wedge of bright sunshine slanted through, dispelling the gloom of the cave's mouth.

Callahan took a deep breath and thought, Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee. And stepped into the summer of '77.

SIX

It was noon, of course. Lunch time. And of course he was standing in front of Chew Chew Mama's. No one seemed to notice his arrival. The chalked specials on the easel just outside the restaurant door read:

All right, one question was answered. It was the day after Eddie had come here. As for the next one…

Callahan put Forty-sixth Street at his back for the time being, and walked up Second Avenue. Once he looked behind him and saw the doorway to the cave following him as faithfully as the billy-bumbler followed the boy. He could see Roland sitting there, putting something in his ears to block the maddening tinkle of the chimes.

He got exactly two blocks before stopping, his eyes growing wide with shock, his mouth dropping open. They had said to expect this, both Roland and Eddie, but in his heart Callahan hadn't believed it. He'd thought he would find The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind perfecdy intact on this perfect summer's day, which was so different from the overcast Calla autumn he'd left. Oh, there might be a sign in the window reading gone on vacation, closed until august-something like that-but it would be there. Oh yes.

It wasn't, though. At least not much of it. The storefront was a burnt-out husk surrounded by yellow tape reading police investigation. When he stepped a little closer, he could smell charred lumber, burnt paper, and… very faint… the odor of gasoline.

An elderly shoeshine-boy had set up shop in front of Station Shoes amp; Boots, nearby. Now he said to Callahan, "Shame, ain't it? Thank God the place was empty."

"Aye, say thankya. When did it happen?"

"Middle of the night, when else? You think them goombars is gonna come 'trow their Molly Coh'tails in broad daylight? They ain't geniuses, but they're smarter than that."

"Couldn't it have been faulty wiring? Or maybe spontaneous combustion?"

The elderly shine-boy gave Callahan a cynical look. Oh, please, it said. He cocked a polish-smeared thumb at the smoldering ruin. "You see that yella tape? You think they put yella tape says perlice investigation around a place that spontaneously combust-you-lated? No way, my friend. No way Jose. Cal Tower was in hock to the bad boys. Up to his eyebrows. Everybody on the block knew it." The shine-boy waggled his own eyebrows, which were lush and white and tangled. "I hate to think about his loss. He had some very vallable books in the back, there. Ver-ry vallable."

Callahan thanked the shine-boy for his insights, then turned and started back down Second Avenue. He kept touching himself furtively, trying to convince himself that this was really happening. He kept taking deep breaths of the city air with its tang of hydrocarbons, and relished every city sound, from the snore of the buses (there were ads for Charlie's Angels on some of them) to the pounding of the jackhammers and the incessant honking of horns. As he approached Tower of Power Records, he paused for a moment, transfixed by the music pouring from the speakers over the doors. It was an oldie he hadn't heard in years, one that had been popular way back in his Lowell days. Something about following the Pied Piper.

"Crispin St. Peters," he murmured. "That was his name. Good God, say Man Jesus, I'm really here. I'm really in New York!"

As if to confirm this, a harried-sounding woman said, "Maybe some people can stand around all day, but some of us are walking here. Think yez could move it along, or at least get over to the side?"

Callahan spoke an apology which he doubted was heard (or appreciated if it was), and moved along. That sense of being in a dream-an extraordinarily vivid dream-persisted until he neared Forty-sixth Street. Then he began to hear the rose, and everything in his life changed.

SEVEN

At first it was little more than a murmur, but as he drew closer, he thought he could hear many voices, angelic voices, singing. Raising their confident, joyful psalms to God. He had never heard anything so sweet, and he began to run. He came to the fence and laid his hands against it. He began to weep, couldn't help it. He supposed people were looking at him, but he didn't care. He suddenly understood a great deal about Roland and his friends, and for the first time felt a part of them. No wonder they were trying so hard to survive, and to go on! No wonder, when this was at stake! There was something on the other side of this fence with its tattered overlay of posters… something so utterly and completely wonderful…

A young man with his long hair held back in a rubber band and wearing a tipped-back cowboy hat stopped and clapped him briefly on the shoulder. "It's nice here, isn't it?" the hippie cowboy said. "I don't know just why, but it really is. I come once a day. You want to know something?"

Callahan turned toward the young man, wiping at his streaming eyes. "Yes, I guess so."

The young man brushed a hand across his brow, then his cheek. "I used to have the world's worst acne. I mean, pizza-face wasn't even in it, I was roadkill-face. Then I started coming here in late March or early April, and… everything cleared up." The young man laughed. "The dermo guy my Dad sent me to says it's the zinc oxide, but I think it's this place. Something about this place. Do you hear it?"

Although Callahan's voice was ringing with sweetly singing voices-it was like being in Notre Dame cathedral, and surrounded by choirs-he shook his head. Doing so was nothing more than instinct.

"Nah," said the hippie in the cowboy hat, "me neither. But sometimes I think I do." He raised his right hand to Callahan, the first two fingers extended in a V. "Peace, brother."

"Peace," Callahan said, and returned the sign.

When the hippie cowboy was gone, Callahan ran his hand across the splintery boards of the fence, and a tattered poster advertising War of the Zombies. What he wanted more than anything was to climb over and see the rose… possibly to fall on his knees and adore it. But the sidewalks were packed with people, and already he had attracted too many curious looks, some no doubt from people who, like the hippie cowboy, knew a bit about the power of this place. He would best serve the great and singing force behind this fence (was it a rose? could it be no more than that?) by protecting it. And that meant protecting Calvin Tower from whoever had burned down his store.

Still trailing his hand along the rough boards, he turned onto Forty-sixth Street. Down at the end on this side was the glassy-green bulk of the U.N. Plaza Hotel. Calla, Callahan, he thought, and then: Calla, Callahan, Calvin. And then: Calla-come-four, there's a rose behind the door, Calla-come-Callahan, Calvin's one more!

He reached the end of the fence. At first he saw nothing, and his heart sank. Then he looked down, and there it was, at knee height: five numbers written in black. Callahan reached into his pocket for the stub of pencil he always kept there, then pulled off a corner of a poster for an off-Broadway play called Dungeon Plunger, A Revue. On this he scribbled five numbers.

He didn't want to leave, but knew he had to; clear thinking this close to the rose was impossible.

I'll be back, he told it, and to his delighted amazement, a thought came back, clear and true: Yes, Father, anytime. Come-commala.

On the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, he looked behind him. The door to the cave was still there, the bottom floating about three inches off the sidewalk. A middle-aged couple, tourists judging by the guide-books in their hands, came walking up from the direction of the hotel. Chatting to each other, they reached the door and swerved around it. They don't see it, but they feel it, Callahan thought. And if the sidewalk had been crowded and swerving had been impossible? He thought in that case they would have walked right through the place where it hung and shimmered, perhaps feeling nothing but a momentary coldness and sense of vertigo. Perhaps hearing, faintly, the sour tang of chimes and catching a whiff of something like burnt onions or seared meat. And that night, perhaps, they'd have transient dreams of places far stranger than Fun City.

He could step back through, probably should; he'd gotten what he'd come for. But a brisk walk would take him to the New York Public Library. There, behind the stone lions, even a man with no money in his pocket could get a little information. The location of a certain zip code, for instance. And-tell the truth and shame the devil-he didn't want to leave just yet.

He waved his hands in front of him until the gunslinger noticed what he was doing. Ignoring the looks of the passersby, Callahan raised his fingers in the air once, twice, three times, not sure the gunslinger would get it. Roland seemed to. He gave an exaggerated nod, then thumbs-up for good measure.

Callahan set off, walking so fast he was nearly jogging. It wouldn't do to linger, no matter how pleasant a change New York made. It couldn't be pleasant where Roland was waiting. And, according to Eddie, it might be dangerous, as well.

EIGHT

The gunslinger had no problem understanding Callahan's message. Thirty fingers, thirty minutes. The Pere wanted another half an hour on the other side. Roland surmised he had thought of a way to turn the number written on the fence into an actual place. If he could do that, it would be all to the good.

Information was power. And sometimes, when time was tight, it was speed.

The bullets in his ears blocked the voices completely. The chimes got in, but even they were dulled. A good thing, because the sound of them was far worse than the warble of the thinny. A couple of days listening to that sound and he reckoned he'd be ready for the lunatic asylum, but for thirty minutes he'd be all right. If worse came to worst, he might be able to pitch something through the door, attract the Pere's attention, and get him to come back early.

For a little while Roland watched the street unroll before Callahan. The doors on the beach had been like looking through the eyes of his three: Eddie, Odetta, Jack Mort. This one was a little different. He could always see Callahan's back in it, or his face if he turned around to look, as he often did.

To pass the time, Roland got up to look at a few of the books which had meant so much to Calvin Tower that he'd made their safety a condition for his cooperation. The first one Roland pulled out had the silhouette of a man's head on it. The man was smoking a pipe and wearing a sort of gamekeeper's hat. Cort had had one like it, and as a boy, Roland had thought it much more stylish than his father's old dayrider with its sweat-stains and frayed tugstring. The words on the book were of the New York world. Roland was sure he could have read them easily if he'd been on that side, but he wasn't. As it was, he could read some, and the result was almost as maddening as the chimes.

"Sir-lock Hones," he read aloud. "No, Holmes. Like Odetta's fathername. Four… short… movels. Movels?" No, this one was anN. "four short novels by Sirlock Holmes." He opened the book, running a respectful hand over the title page and then smelling it: the spicy, faintly sweet aroma of good old paper. He could make out the name of one of the four short novels-The Sign of the Four. Other than the words Hound and Study, the titles of the others were gibberish to him.

"A sign is a sigul," he said. When he found himself counting the number of letters in the title, he had to laugh at himself.

Besides, there were only sixteen. He put the book back and took up another, this one with a drawing of a soldier on the front. He could make out one word of the title: Dead. He looked at another. A man and woman kissing on the cover. Yes, there were always men and women kissing in stories; folks liked that. He put it back and looked up to check on Callahan's progress. His eyes widened slightly as he saw the Pere walking into a great room filled with books and what Eddie called Magda-seens… although Roland was still unsure what Magda had seen, or why there should be so much written about it.

He pulled out another book, and smiled at the picture on the cover. There was a church, with the sun going down red behind it. The church looked a bit like Our Lady of Serenity. He opened it and thumbed through it. A delah of words, but he could only make out one in every three, if that. No pictures. He was about to put it back when something caught his eye. Leaped at his eye. Roland stopped breathing for a moment.

He stood back, no longer hearing the todash chimes, no longer caring about the great room of books Callahan had entered. He began reading the book with the church on the front. Or trying to. The words swam maddeningly in front of his eyes, and he couldn't be sure. Not quite. But, gods! If he was seeing what he thought he was seeing-

Intuition told him that this was a key. But to what door?

He didn't know, couldn't read enough of the words to know. But the book in his hands seemed almost to thrum. Roland thought that perhaps this book was like the rose…

… but there were black roses, too.

NINE

"Roland, I found it! It's a little town in central Maine called East Stoneham, about forty miles north of Portland and…" He stopped, getting a good look at the gunslinger. "What's wrong?"

"The chiming sound," Roland said quickly. "Even with my ears stopped up, it got through." The door was shut and the chimes were gone, but there were still the voices. Callahan's father was currently asking if Donnie thought those magazines he'd found under his son's bed were anything a Christian boy would want to have, what if his mother had found them? And when Roland suggested they leave the cave, Callahan was more than willing to go. He remembered that conversation with his old man far too clearly. They had ended up praying together at the foot of his bed, and the three Playboys had gone into the incinerator out back.

Roland returned the carved box to the pink bag and once more stowed it carefully behind Tower's case of valuable books. He had already replaced the book with the church on it, turning it with the title down so he could find it again quickly.

They went out and stood side by side, taking deep breaths of the fresh air. "Are you sure the chimes is all it was?" Callahan asked. "Man, you looked as though you'd seen a ghost."

"The todash chimes are worse than ghosts," Roland said. That might or might not be true, but it seemed to satisfy Callahan. As they started down the path, Roland remembered the promise he had made to the others, and, more important, to himself: no more secrets within the tet. How quickly he found himself ready to break that promise! But he felt he was right to do so. He knew at least some of the names in that book. The others would know them, too. Later they would need to know, if the book was as important as he thought it might be. But now it would only distract them from the approaching business of the Wolves. If they could win that battle, then perhaps…

"Roland, are you quite sure you're okay?"

"Yes." He clapped Callahan on the shoulder. The others would be able to read the book, and by reading might discover what it meant. Perhaps the story in the book was just a story… but how could it be, when…

"Pere?"

"Yes, Roland."

"A novel is a story, isn't it? A made-up story?"

"Yes, a long one."

"But make-believe."

"Yes, that's what fiction means. Make-believe."

Roland pondered this. Charlie the Choo-Choo had also been make-believe, only in many ways, many vital ways, it hadn't been. And the author's name had changed. There were many different worlds, all held together by the Tower. Maybe…

No, not now. He mustn't think about these things now.

"Tell me about the town where Tower and his friend went," Roland said.

"I can't, really. I found it in one of the Maine telephone books, that's all. Also a simplified zip code map that showed about where it is."

"Good. That's very good."

"Roland, are you sure you're all right?"

Calla, Roland thought. Callahan. He made himself smile. Made himself clap Callahan on the shoulder again.

"I'm fine," he said. "Now let's get back to town."

ONE

Tian Jaffords had never been more frightened in his life than he was as he stood on the stage in the Pavilion, looking down at the folken of Calla Bryn Sturgis. He knew there were likely no more than five hundred-six hundred at the very outside-but to him it looked like a multitude, and their taut silence was unnerving. He looked at his wife for comfort and found none there. Zalia's face looked thin and dark and pinched, the face of an old woman rather than one still well within her childbearing years.

Nor did the look of this late afternoon help him find calm. Overhead the sky was a pellucid, cloudless blue, but it was too dark for five o' the clock. There was a huge bank of clouds in the southwest, and the sun had passed behind them just as he climbed the steps to the stage. It was what his Gran-pere would have called weirding weather; omenish, say thankya. In the constant darkness that was Thunderclap, lightning flashed like great sparklights.

Had I known it would come to this, I'd never have started it a-going, he thought wildly. And this time there'll be no Pere Callahan to haul my poor old ashes out of the fire. Although Callahan was there, standing with Roland and his friends-they of the hard calibers-with his arms folded on his plain black shirt with the notched collar and his Man Jesus cross hanging above.

He told himself not to be foolish, that Callahan would help, and the outworlders would help, as well. They were there to help. The code they followed demanded that they must help, even if it meant their destruction and the end of whatever quest they were on. He told himself that all he needed to do was introduce Roland, and Roland would come. Once before, the gunslinger had stood on this stage and danced the commala and won their hearts. Did Tian doubt that Roland would win their hearts again? In truth, Tian did not. What he was afraid of in his heart was that this time it would be a death-dance instead of a life-dance. Because death was what this man and his friends were about; it was their bread and wine. It was the sherbet they took to clear their palates when the meal was done. At that first meeting-could it have been less than a month ago?-Tian had spoken out of angry desperation, but a month was long enough to count the cost. What if this was a mistake? What if the Wolves burned the entire Calla flat with their light-sticks, took the children they wanted one final time, and exploded all the ones that were left-old, young, in the middle-with their whizzing balls of death?

They stood waiting for him to begin, the gathered Calla. Eisenharts and Overholsers and Javiers and Tooks without number (although no twins among these last of the age the Wolves liked, aye-no, such lucky Tooks they were); Telford standing with the men and his plump but hard-faced wife with the women; Strongs and Rossiters and Slightmans and Hands and Rosarios and Posellas; the Manni once again bunched together like a dark stain of ink, Henchick their patriarch standing with young Cantab, whom all the children liked so well; Andy, another favorite of the kiddies, standing off to one side with his skinny metal arms akimbo and his blue electric eyes flashing in the gloom; the Sisters of Oriza bunched together like birds on fencewire (Tian's wife among them); and the cowboys, the hired men, the dayboys, even old Bernardo, the town tosspot.

To Tian's right, those who had carried the feather shuffled a bit uneasily. In ordinary circumstances, one set of twins was plenty to take the opopanax feather; in most cases, people knew well in advance what was up, and carrying the feadier was nothing but a formality. This time (it had been Margaret Eisenhart's idea), three sets of twins had gone together with the hallowed feather, carrying it from town to smallhold to ranch to farm in a bucka driven by Cantab, who sat unusually silent and songless up front, clucking along a matched set of brown mules that needed precious little help from the likes of him. Oldest at twenty-three were the Haggengood twins, born the year of the last Wolf-raid (and ugly as sin by the lights of most folks, although precious hard workers, say thankya). Next came the Tavery twins, those beautiful map-drawing town brats. Last (and youngest, although eldest of Tian's brood) came Heddon and Hedda. And it was Hedda who got him going. Tian caught her eye and saw that his good (although plain-faced) daughter had sensed her father's fright and was on the verge of tears herself.

Eddie and Jake weren't the only ones who heard the voices of others in their heads; Tian now heard the voice of his Gran-pere. Not as Jamie was now, doddering and nearly toothless, but as he had been twenty years before: old but still capable of clouting you over the River Road if you sassed back or dawdled over a hard pull. Jamie Jaffords who had once stood against the Wolves. This Tian had from time to time doubted, but he doubted it no longer. Because Roland believed.

Garn, then! snarled the voice in his mind. What is it fashes and diddles thee 's'slow, oafing? Tis nobbut to say his name and stand aside, ennit? Then fergood or nis, ye can let him do a'rest.

Still Tian looked out over the silent crowd a moment longer, their bulk hemmed in tonight by torches that didn't change- for this was no party-but only glared a steady orange. Because he wanted to say something, perhaps needed to say something. If only to acknowledge that he was partly to credit for this. For good or for nis.

In the eastern darkness, lightning fired off silent explosions.

Roland, standing with his arms folded like the Pere, caught Tian's eye and nodded slightly to him. Even by warm torchlight, the gunslinger's blue gaze was cold. Almost as cold as Andy's. Yet it was all the encouragement Tian needed.

He took the feather and held it before him. Even the crowd's breathing seemed to still. Somewhere far overtown, a rustie cawed as if to hold back the night.

"Not long since I stood in yon Gathering Hall and told'ee what I believe," Tian said. "That when the Wolves come, they don't just take our children but our hearts and souls. Each time they steal and we stand by, they cut us a little deeper. If you cut a tree deep enough, it dies. Cut a town deep enough, that dies, too."

The voice of Rosalita Munoz, childless her whole life, rang out in the fey dimness of the day with clear ferocity: "Say true, say thankya! Hear him, folkenl Hear him very well!"

"Hear him, hear him, hear him well" ran through the assembly.

"Pere stood up that night and told us there were gunslingers coming from the northwest, coming through Mid-Forest along the Path of the Beam. Some scoffed, but Pere spoke true."

"Say thankya," they replied. "Pere said true." And a woman's voice: "Praise Jesus! Praise Mary, mother of God!"

"They've been among us all these days since. Any who's wanted to speak to em has spoke to em. They have promised nothing but to help-"

"And'll move on, leaving bloody ruin behind em, if we're foolish enough to allow it!" Eben Took roared.

There was a shocked gasp from the crowd. As it died, Wayne Overholser said: "Shut up, ye great mouth-organ."

Took turned to look at Overholser, the Calla's big farmer and Took's best customer, with a look of gaping surprise.

Tian said: "Their dinh is Roland Deschain, of Gilead." They knew this, but the mention of such legendary names still provoked a low, almost moaning murmur. "From In-World that was. Would you hear him? What say you, folken?"

Their response quickly rose to a shout. "Hear him! Hear him! We would hear him to the last! Hear him well, say thankya!" And a soft, rhythmic crumping sound that Tian could not at first identify. Then he realized what it was and almost smiled. This was what the tromping of shor'boots sounded like, not on the boards of the Gathering Hall, but out here on Lady Riza's grass.

Tian held out his hand. Roland came forward. The tromping sound grew louder as he did. Women were joining in, doing the best they could in their soft town shoes. Roland mounted the steps. Tian gave him the feather and left the stage, taking Hedda's hand and motioning for the rest of the twins to go before him. Roland stood with the feather held before him, gripping its ancient lacquered stalk with hands now bearing only eight digits. At last the tromping of the shoes and shor'boots died away. The torches sizzled and spat, illuminating the upturned faces of the folken, showing their hope and fear; showing both very well. The rustie called and was still. In the east, big lightning sliced up the darkness.

The gunslinger stood facing them.

TWO

For what seemed a very long time looking was all he did. In each glazed and frightened eye he read the same thing. He had seen it many times before, and it was easy reading. These people were hungry. They'd fain buy something to eat, fill their restless bellies. He remembered the pieman who walked the streets of Gilead low-town in the hottest days of summer, and how his mother had called him seppe-sai on account of how sick such pies could make people. Seppe-sai meant the death-seller.

Aye, he thought, but I and my friends don't charge.

At this thought, his face lit in a smile. It rolled years off his craggy map, and a sigh of nervous relief came from the crowd. He started as he had before: "We are well-met in the Calla, hear me, I beg."

Silence.

"You have opened to us. We have opened to you. Is it not so?"

"Aye, gunslinger!" Vaughn Eisenhart called back. " 'Tis!"

"Do you see us for what we are, and accept what we do?"

It was Henchick of the Manni who answered this time. "Aye, Roland, by the Book and say thankya. Tare of Eld, White come to stand against Black."

This time the crowd's sigh was long. Somewhere near the back, a woman began to sob.

"Caila-folken, do you seek aid and succor of us?"

Eddie stiffened. This question had been asked of many individuals during their weeks in Calla Bryn Sturgis, but he thought to ask it here was extremely risky. What if they said no?

A moment later Eddie realized he needn't have worried; in sizing up his audience, Roland was as shrewd as ever. Some did in fact say no-a smattering of Haycoxes, a peck of Tooks, and a small cluster of Telfords led the antis-but most of the folken roared out a hearty and immediate AYE, SAY THANKYA! A few others-Overholser was the most prominent-said nothing either way. Eddie thought that in most cases, this would have been the wisest move. The most politic move, anyway. But this wasn't most cases; it was the most extraordinary moment of choice most of these people would ever face. If the Ka-Tet of Nineteen won against the Wolves, the people of this town would remember those who said no and those who said nothing. He wondered idly if Wayne Dale Overholser would still be the big farmer in these parts a year from now.

But then Roland opened the palaver, and Eddie turned his entire attention toward him. His admiring attention. Growing up where and how he had, Eddie had heard plenty of lies. Had told plenty himself, some of them very good ones. But by the time Roland reached the middle of his spiel, Eddie realized he had never been in the presence of a true genius of mendacity until this early evening in Calla Bryn Sturgis. And-

Eddie looked around, then nodded, satisfied.

And they were swallowing every word.

THREE

"Last time I was on this stage before you," Roland began, "I danced the commala. Tonight-"

George Telford interrupted. He was too oily for Eddie's taste, and too sly by half, but he couldn't fault the man's courage, speaking up as he did when the tide was so clearly running in the other direction.

"Aye, we remember, ye danced it well! How dance ye the mortata, Roland, tell me that, I beg."

Disapproving murmurs from the crowd.

"Doesn't matter how I dance it," Roland said, not in the least discommoded, "for my dancing days in the Calla are done. We have work in this town, I and mine. Ye've made us welcome, and we say thankya. Ye've bid us on, sought our aid and succor, so now I bid ye to listen very well. In less of a week come the Wolves."

There was a sigh of agreement. Time might have grown slippery, but even low folken could still hold onto five days' worth of it.

"On the night before they're due, I'd have every Calla twin-child under the age of seventeen there." Roland pointed off to the left, where the Sisters of Oriza had put up a tent. Tonight there were a good many children in there, although by no means the hundred or so at risk. The older had been given the task of tending the younger for the duration of the meeting, and one or another of the Sisters periodically checked to make sure all was yet fine.

"That tent won't hold em all, Roland," Ben Slightman said.

Roland smiled. "But a bigger one will, Ben, and I reckon the Sisters can find one."

"Aye, and give em a meal they won't ever forget!" Margaret Eisenhart called out bravely. Good-natured laughter greeted this, then sputtered before it caught. Many in the crowd were no doubt reflecting that if the Wolves won after all, half the children who spent Wolf's Eve on the Green wouldn't be able to remember their own names a week or two later, let alone what they'd eaten.

"I'd sleep em here so we can get an early start the next morning," Roland said. "From all I've been told, there's no way to know if the Wolves will come early, late, or in the middle of the day. We'd look the fools of the world if they were to come extra early and catch em right here, in the open."

"What's to keep em from coming a day early?" Eben Took called out truculently. "Or at midnight on what you call Wolf's Eve?"

"They can't," Roland said simply. And, based on Jamie Jaffords's testimony, they were almost positive this was true. The old man's story was his reason for letting Andy and Ben Slightman run free for the next five days and nights. "They come from afar, and not all their traveling is on horseback. Their schedule is fixed far in advance."

"How do'ee know?" Louis Haycox asked.

"Better I not tell," Roland said. "Mayhap the Wolves have long ears."

A considering silence met this.

"On the same night-Wolf's Eve-I'd have a dozen bucka wagons here, the biggest in the Calla, to draw the children out to the north of town. I'll appoint the drivers. There'll also be child-minders to go with em, and stay with em when the time comes. And ye needn't ask me where they'll be going; it's best we not speak of that, either."

Of course most of them thought they already knew where the children would be taken: the old Gloria. Word had a way of getting around, as Roland well knew. Ben Slightman had thought a little further-to the Redbird Two, south of the Gloria-and that was also fine.

George Telford cried out: "Don't listen to this, folken, I beg ye! And even if'ee do listen, for your souls and the life of this town, don't do it! What he's saying is madness! We've tried to hide our children before, and it doesn't work! But even if it did, they'd surely come and burn this town for vengeance' sake, burn it flat-"

"Silence, ye coward." It was Henchick, his voice as dry as a whipcrack.

Telford would have said more regardless, but his eldest son took his arm and made him stop. It was just as well. The clomping of the shor'boots had begun again. Telford looked at Eisenhart unbelievingly, his thought as clear as a shout: Ye can't mean to be part of this madness, can ye?

The big rancher shook his head. "No point looking at me so, George. I stand with my wife, and she stands with the Eld."

Applause greeted this. Roland waited for it to quiet.

"Rancher Telford says true. The Wolves likely will know where the children have been bunkered. And when they come, my ka-tet will be there to greet them. It won't be the first time we've stood against such as they."

Roars of approval. More soft clumping of boots. Some rhythmic applause. Telford and Eben Took looked about with wide eyes, like men discovering they had awakened in a lunatic asylum.

When the Pavilion was quiet again, Roland said: "Some from town have agreed to stand with us, folka with good weapons. Again, it's not a thing you need to know about just now." But of course the feminine construction told those who didn't already know about the Sisters of Oriza a great deal. Eddie once more had to marvel at the way he was leading them; cozy wasn't in it. He glanced at Susannah, who rolled her eyes and gave him a smile. But the hand she put on his arm was cold. She wanted this to be over. Eddie knew exactly how she felt.

Telford tried one last time. "People, hear me! All this has been tried before!"

It was Jake Chambers who spoke up. "It hasn't been tried by gunslingers, sai Telford."

A fierce roar of approval met this. There was more stamping and clapping. Roland finally had to raise his hands to quiet it.

"Most of the Wolves will go to where they think the children are, and we'll deal with them there," he said. "Smaller groups may indeed raid the farms or ranches. Some may come into town. And aye, there may be some burning."

They listened silently and respectfully, nodding, arriving ahead of him to the next point. As he had wanted them to.

"A burned building can be replaced. A roont child cannot."

"Aye," said Rosalita. "Nor a roont heart."

There were murmurs of agreement, mostly from the women. In Calla Bryn Sturgis (as in most other places), men in a state of sobriety did not much like to talk about their hearts.

"Hear me now, for I'd tell you at least this much more: We know exactly what these Wolves are. Jamie Jaffords has told us what we already suspected."

There were murmurs of surprise. Heads turned. Jamie, standing beside his grandson, managed to straighten his curved back for a moment or two and actually puff up his sunken chest. Eddie only hoped the old buzzard would hold his peace over what came next. If he got muddled and contradicted the tale Roland was about to tell, their job would become much harder. At the very least it would mean grabbing Slightman and Andy early. And if Finli o' Tego-the voice Slightman reported to from the Dogan-didn't hear from these two again before the day of the Wolves, there would be suspicions. Eddie felt movement in the hand on his arm. Susannah had just crossed her fingers.

FOUR

"There aren't living creatures beneath the masks," Roland said. "The Wolves are the undead servants of the vampires who rule Thunderclap."

An awed murmur greeted this carefully crafted bit of claptrap.

"They're what my friends Eddie, Susannah, and Jake call zombis. They can't be killed by bow, bah, or bullet unless struck in the brain or the heart." Roland tapped the left side of his chest for emphasis. "And of course when they come on their raids, they come wearing heavy armor under their clothes."

Henchick was nodding. Several of the other older men and women-folken who well remembered the Wolves coming not just once before but twice-were doing the same. "It explains a good deal," he said. "But how-"

"To strike them in the brain is beyond our abilities, because of the helmets they wear under their hoods," Roland said. "But we saw such creatures in Lud. Their weakness is here." Again he tapped his chest. "The undead don't breathe, but there's a kind of gill above their hearts. If they armor it over, they die. That's where we'll strike them."

A low, considering hum of conversation greeted this. And then Gran-pere's voice, shrill and excited: " Tis ever' word true, for dinna Molly Doolin strike one there hersel' wi' the dish, an' not even dead-on, neither, and yet the creetur' dropped down!"

Susannah's hand tightened on Eddie's arm enough for him to feel her short nails, but when he looked at her, she was grinning in spite of herself. He saw a similar expression on Jake's face. Trig enough when the chips were down, old man, Eddie thought. Sorry I ever doubted you. Let Andy and Slightman go back across the river and report that happy horseshit! He'd asked Roland if they (the faceless they represented by someone who called himself Finli o' Tego) would believe such tripe. They've raided this side of the Why'e for over a hundred years and lost but a single fighter, Roland had replied. I think they'd believe anything. At this point their really vulnerable spot is their complacence.

"Bring your twins here by seven o' the clock on Wolfs Eve," Roland said. "There'll be ladies-Sisters of Oriza, ye ken- with lists on slateboards. They'll scratch off each pair as they come in. It's my hope to have a line drawn through every name before nine o' the clock."

"Ye'll not drig no line through the names o' mine!" cried an angry voice from the back of the crowd. The voice's owner pushed several people aside and stepped forward next to Jake. He was a squat man with a smallhold rice-patch far to the south'ards. Roland scratched through the untidy storehouse of his recent memory (untidy, yes, but nothing was ever thrown away) and eventually came up with the name: Neil Faraday. One of the few who hadn't been home when Roland and his ka-tet had come calling… or not home to them, at least. A hard worker, according to Tian, but an even harder drinker. He certainly looked the part. There were dark circles under his eyes and a complication of burst purplish veins on each cheek. Scruffy, say big-big. Yet Telford and Took threw him a grateful, surprised look. Another sane man in bedlam, it said. Thank the gods.

" 'Ay'll take 'een babbies anyro' and burn 'een squabbot town flat," he said, speaking in an accent that made his words almost incomprehensible. "But 'ay'll have one each o' my see', an' 'at'U stee' lea' me three, and a' best 'ay ain't worth squabbot, but my howgan is!" Faraday looked around at the townsfolk with an expression of sardonic disdain. "Burn'ee flat an' be damned to 'ee," he said. "Numb gits!" And back into the crowd he went, leaving a surprising number of people looking shaken and thoughtful. He had done more to turn the momentum of the crowd with his contemptuous and (to Eddie, at least) incomprehensible tirade than Telford and Took had been able to do together.

He may be shirttail poor, but I doubt if he'll have trouble getting credit from Took for the next year or so, Eddie thought. If the store still stands, that is.

"Sai Faraday's got a right to his opinion, but I hope he'll change it over the next few days," Roland said. "I hope you folks will help him change it. Because if he doesn't, he's apt to be left not with three kiddies but none at all." He raised his voice and shaped it toward the place where Faraday stood, glowering. "Then he can see how he likes working his tillage with no help but two mules and a wife."

Telford stepped forward to the edge of the stage, his face red with fury. "Is there nothing ye won't say to win your argument, you chary man? Is there no lie you won't tell?"

"I don't lie and I don't say for certain," Roland replied. "If I've given anyone the idea that I know all the answers when less than a season ago I didn't even know the Wolves existed, I cry your pardon. But let me tell you a story before I bid you goodnight. When I was a boy in Gilead, before the coming of the Good Man and the great burning that followed, there was a tree farm out to the east o' barony."

"Whoever heard of farming trees?" someone called derisively.

Roland smiled and nodded. "Perhaps not ordinary trees, or even ironwoods, but these were blossies, a wonderful light wood, yet strong. The best wood for boats that ever was. A piece cut thin nearly floats in the air. They grew over a thousand acres of land, tens of thousands of blosswood trees in neat rows, all overseen by the barony forester. And the rule, never even bent, let alone broken, was this: take two, plant three."

"Aye," Eisenhart said. " 'Tis much the same with stock, and with threaded stock the advice is to keep four for every one ye sell or kill. Not that many could afford to do so."

Roland's eyes roamed the crowd. "During the summer season I turned ten, a plague fell on the blosswood forest. Spiders spun white webs over the upper branches of some, and those trees died from their tops down, rotting as they went, falling of their own weight long before the plague could get to the roots. The forester saw what was happening, and ordered all the good trees cut down at once. To save the wood while it was still worth saving, do you see? There was no more take two and plant three, because the rule no longer made any sense. The following summer, the blossy woods east of Gilead was gone."

Utter silence from the folken. The day had drained down to a premature dusk. The torches hissed. Not an eye stirred from the gunslinger's face.

"Here in the Calla, the Wolves harvest babies. And needn't even go to the work of planting em, because-hear me-that's the way it is with men and women. Even the children know. 'Daddy's no fool, when he plants the rice commala, Mommy knows just what to do.' "

A murmur from the folken.

"The Wolves take, then wait. Take… and wait. It's worked fine for them, because men and women always plant new babies, no matter what else befalls. But now comes a new thing. Now comes plague."

Took began, "Aye, say true, ye're a plague all r-" Then someone knocked the hat off his head. Eben Took whirled, looked for the culprit, and saw fifty unfriendly faces. He snatched up his hat, held it to his breast, and said no more.

"If they see the baby-farming is over for them here," Roland said, "this last time they won't just take twins; this time they'll take every child they can get their hands on while the taking's good. So bring your little ones at seven o' the clock. That's my best advice to you."

"What choice have you left em?" Telford asked. He was white with fear and fury.

Roland had had enough of him. His voice rose to a shout, and Telford fell back from the force of his suddenly blazing blue eyes. "None that you have to worry about, sai, for your children are grown, as everyone in town knows. You've had your say. Now why don't you shut up?"

A thunder of applause and boot-stomping greeted this. Telford took the bellowing and jeering for as long as he could, his head lowered between his hunched shoulders like a bull about to charge. Then he turned and began shoving his way through the crowd. Took followed. A few moments later, they were gone. Not long after that, the meeting ended. There was no vote. Roland had given them nothing to vote on.

No, Eddie thought again as he pushed Susannah's chair toward the refreshments, cozy really wasn't in it at all.

FIVE

Not long after, Roland accosted Ben Slightman. The foreman was standing beneath one of the torch-poles, balancing a cup of coffee and a plate with a piece of cake on it. Roland also had cake and coffee. Across the greensward, the children's tent had for the nonce become the refreshment tent. A long line of waiting people snaked out of it. There was low talk but little laughter. Closer by, Benny and Jake were tossing a springball back and forth, every now and then letting Oy have a turn. The bumbler was barking happily, but the boys seemed as subdued as the people waiting in line.

"Ye spoke well tonight," Slightman said, and clicked his coffee cup against Roland's.

"Do you say so?"

"Aye. Of course they were ready, as I think ye knew, but Faraday must have been a surprise to ye, and ye handled him well."

"I only told the truth," Roland said. "If the Wolves lose enough of their troop, they'll take what they can and cut their losses. Legends grow beards, and twenty-three years is plenty of time to grow a long one. Calla-folken, assume there are thousands of Wolves over there in Thunderclap, maybe millions of em, but I don't think that's true."

Slightman was looking at him with frank fascination. "Why not?"

"Because things are running down," Roland said simply, and then: "I need you to promise me something."

Slightman looked at him warily. The lenses of his spectacles twinkled in the torchlight. "If I can, Roland, I will."

"Make sure your boy's here four nights from now. His sister's dead, but I doubt if that untwins him to the Wolves. He's still very likely got what it is they come for."

Slightman made no effort to disguise his relief. "Aye, he'll be here. I never considered otten else."

"Good. And I have a job for you, if you'll do it."

The wary look returned. "What job would it be?"

"I started off thinking that six would be enough to mind the children while we dealt with the Wolves, and then Rosalita asked me what I'd do if they got frightened and panicked."

"Ah, but you'll have em in a cave, won't you?" Slightman asked, lowering his voice. "Kiddies can't run far in a cave, even if they do take fright."

"Far enough to run into a wall and brain themselves or fall down a hole in the dark. If one were to start a stampede on account of the yelling and the smoke and the fire, they might all fall down a hole in the dark. I've decided I'd like to have an even ten watching the kiddos. I'd like you to be one of em."

"Roland, I'm flattered."

"Is that a yes?"

Slightman nodded.

Roland eyed him. "You know that if we lose, the ones minding the children are apt to die?"

"If I thought you were going to lose, I'd never agree to go out there with the kids." He paused. "Or send my own."

"Thank you, Ben. Thee's a good man."

Slightman lowered his voice even further. "Which of the mines is it going to be? The Gloria or the Redbird?" And when Roland didn't answer immediately: "Of course I understand if ye'd rather not tell-"

"It's not that," Roland said. "It's that we haven't decided."

"But it'll be one or the other."

"Oh, aye, where else?" Roland said absently, and began to roll a smoke.

"And ye'll try to get above them?"

"Wouldn't work," Roland said. "Angle's wrong." He patted his chest above his heart. "Have to hit em here, remember. Other places… no good. Even a bullet that goes through armor wouldn't do much damage to a zombi."

"It's a problem, isn't it?"

"It's an opportunity," Roland corrected. "You know the scree that spreads out below the adits of those old garnet mines? Looks like a baby's bib?"

"Aye?"

"We'll hide ourselves in there. Under there. And when they ride toward us, we'll rise up and…" Roland cocked a thumb and forefinger at Slightman and made a trigger-pulling gesture.

A smile spread over the foreman's face. "Roland, that's brilliant!"

"No," Roland contradicted. "Only simple. But simple's usually best. I think we'll surprise them. Hem them in and pick them off. It's worked for me before. No reason it shouldn't work again."

"No. I suppose not."

Roland looked around. "Best we not talk about such things here, Ben. I know you're safe, but-"

Ben nodded rapidly. "Say n'more, Roland, I understand."

The springball rolled to Slightman's feet. His son held up his hands for it, smiling. "Pa! Throw it!"

Ben did, and hard. The ball sailed, just as Molly's plate had in Gran-pere's story. Benny leaped, caught it one-handed, and laughed. His father grinned at him fondly, then glanced at Roland. "They's a pair, ain't they? Yours and mine?"

"Aye," Roland said, almost smiling. "Almost like brothers, sure enough."

SIX

The ka-tet ambled back toward the rectory, riding four abreast, feeling every town eye that watched them go: death on horseback.

"You happy with how it went, sugar?" Susannah asked Roland.

"It'll do," he allowed, and began to roll a smoke.

"I'd like to try one of those," Jake said suddenly.

Susannah gave him a look both shocked and amused. "Bite your tongue, sugar-you haven't seen thirteen yet."

"My Dad started when he was ten."

"And'll be dead by fifty, like as not," Susannah said sternly.

"No great loss," Jake muttered, but he let the subject drop.

"What about Mia?" Roland asked, popping a match with his thumbnail. "Is she quiet?"

"If it wasn't for you boys, I'm not sure I'd believe there even was such a jane."

"And your belly's quiet, too?"

"Yes." Susannah guessed everyone had rules about lying; hers was that if you were going to tell one, you did best to keep it short. If she had a chap in her belly-some sort of monster-she'd let them help her worry about it a week from tonight. If they were still able to worry about anything, that was. For the time being they didn't need to know about the few little cramps she'd been having.

"Then all's well," the gunslinger said. They rode in silence for awhile, and then he said: "I hope you two boys can dig. There'll be some digging to do."

"Graves?" Eddie asked, not sure if he was joking or not.

"Graves come later." Roland looked up at the sky, but the clouds had advanced out of the west and stolen the stars. "Just remember, it's the winners who dig them."

ONE

Rising up from the darkness, dolorous and accusatory, came the voice of Henry Dean, the great sage and eminent junkie. "I'm in hell, bro! I'm in hell and I can't get a fix and it's all your fault!"

"How long will we have to be here, do you think?" Eddie asked Callahan. They had just reached the Doorway Cave, and the great sage's little bro was already shaking a pair of bullets in his right hand like dice-seven-come-eleven, baby need a little peace n quiet. It was the day after the big meeting, and when Eddie and the Pere had ridden out of town, the high street had seemed unusually quiet. It was almost as if the Calla was hiding from itself, overwhelmed by what it had committed itself to.

"I'm afraid it'll be awhile," Callahan admitted. He was neatly (and nondescriptly, he hoped) dressed. In the breast pocket of his shirt was all the American money they'd been able to put together: eleven crumpled dollars and a pair of quarters. He thought it would be a bitter joke if he turned up in a version of America where Lincoln was on the single and Washington on the fifties. "But we can do it in stages, I think."

"Thank God for small favors," Eddie said, and dragged the pink bag out from behind Tower's bookcase. He lifted it with both hands, began to turn, then stopped. He was frowning.

"What is it?" Callahan asked.

"There's something in here."

"Yes, the box."

"No, something in the bag. Sewn into the lining, I think. It feels like a little rock. Maybe there's a secret pocket."

"And maybe," Callahan said, "this isn't the time to investigate it."

Still, Eddie gave the object another small squeeze. It didn't feel like a stone, exactly. But Callahan was probably right. They had enough mysteries on their hands already. This one was for another day.

When Eddie slid the ghostwood box out of the bag, a sick dread invaded both his head and his heart. "I hate this thing. I keep feeling like it's going to turn on me and eat me like a… a taco-chip."

"It probably could," Callahan said. "If you feel something really bad happening, Eddie, shut the damn thing."

"Your ass would be stuck on the other side if I did."

"It's not as though I'm a stranger there," Callahan said, eyeing the unfound door. Eddie heard his brother; Callahan heard his mother, endlessly hectoring, calling him Donnie. He'd always hated being called Donnie. "I'll just wait for it to open again."

Eddie stuffed the bullets into his ears.

"Why are you letting him do that, Donnie?" Callahan's mother moaned from the darkness. "Bullets in your ears, that's dangerous!"

"Go on," Eddie said. "Get it done." He opened the box. The chimes attacked Callahan's ears. And his heart. The door to everywhere clicked open.

TWO

He went through thinking about two things: the year 1977 and the men's room on the main floor of the New York Public Library. He stepped into a bathroom stall with graffiti on the walls (BANGO SKANK had been there) and the sound of a flushing urinal somewhere to his left. He waited for whoever it was to leave, then stepped out of the stall.

It took him only ten minutes to find what he needed. When he stepped back through the door into the cave, he was holding a book under his arm. He asked Eddie to step outside with him, and didn't have to ask twice. In the fresh air and breezy sunshine (the previous night's clouds had blown away), Eddie took the bullets from his ears and examined the book. It was called Yankee Highways.

"The Father's a library thief," Eddie remarked. "You're exactly the sort of person who makes the fees go up."

"I'll return it someday," Callahan said. He meant it. "The important thing is I got lucky on my second try. Check page one-nineteen."

Eddie did. The photograph showed a stark white church sitting on a hill above a dirt road. East Stoneham Methodist Meeting Hall, the caption said. Built 1819. Eddie thought: Add em, come out with nineteen. Of course.

He mentioned this to Callahan, who smiled and nodded. "Notice anything else?"

Of course he did. "It looks like the Calla Gathering Hall."

"So it does. Its twin, almost." Callahan took a deep breath. "Are you ready for round two?"

"I guess so."

"This one's apt to be longer, but you should be able to pass the time. There's plenty of reading matter."

"I don't think I could read," Eddie said. "I'm too fucking nervous, pardon my French. Maybe I'll see what's in the lining of the bag."

But Eddie forgot about the object in the lining of the pink bag; it was Susannah who eventually found that, and when she did, she was no longer herself.

THREE

Thinking 1977 and holding the book open to the picture of the Methodist Meeting Hall in East Stoneham, Callahan stepped through the unfound door for the second time. He came out on a brilliantly sunny New England morning. The church was there, but it had been painted since its picture had been taken for Yankee Highways, and the road had been paved. Sitting nearby was a building that hadn't been in the photo: the East Stoneham General Store. Good.

He walked down there, followed by the floating doorway, reminding himself not to spend one of the quarters, which had come from his own little stash, unless he absolutely had to. The one from Jake was dated 1969, which was okay. His, however, was from 1981, and that wasn't. As he walked past the Mobil gas pumps (where regular was selling for forty-nine cents a gallon), he transferred it to his back pocket.

When he entered the store-which smelled almost exactly like Took's-a bell jingled. To the left was a stack of Portland Press-Heralds, and the date gave him a nasty little shock. When he'd taken the book from the New York Public Library, not half an hour ago by his body's clock, it had been June 26th. The date on these papers was the 27th.

He took one, reading the headlines (a flood in New Orleans, the usual unrest among the homicidal idiots of the mideast) and noting the price: a dime. Good. He'd get change back from his '69 quarter. Maybe buy a piece of good old Made in the U.S.A. salami. The clerk looked him over with a cheerful eye as he approached the counter.

"That do it?" he asked.

"Well, I tell you what," Callahan said. "I could use a point toward the post office, if that does ya."

The clerk raised an eyebrow and smiled. "You sound like you're from these parts."

"Do you say so, then?" Callahan asked, also smiling.

"Ayuh. Anyway, post office is easy. Ain't but a mile down this road, on your left." He pronounced road rud, exactly as Jamie Jaffords might have done.

"Good enough. And do you sell salami by the slice?"

"I'll sell it just about any old way you want to buy it," the clerk said amiably. "Summer visitor, are you?" It came out summah visitah, and Callahan almost expected him to add Tell me, I beg.

"You could call me that, I guess," Callahan said.

FOUR

In the cave, Eddie fought against the faint but maddening jangle of the chimes and peered through the half-open door. Callahan was walking down a country road. Goody gumdrops for him. Meantime, maybe Mrs. Dean's little boy would try having himself a bit of a read. With a cold (and slightly trembling) hand, he reached into the bookcase and pulled out a volume two down from one that had been turned upside down, one that would certainly have changed his day had he happened to grab it. What he came up with instead was Four Short Novels of Sherlock Holmes. Ah, Holmes, another great sage and eminent junkie. Eddie opened to A Study in Scarlet and began to read. Every now and then he found himself looking down at the box, where Black Thirteen pulsed out its weird force. He could just see a curve of glass. After a little bit he gave up trying to read, only looking at the curve of glass, growing more and more fascinated. But the chimes were fading, and that was good, wasn't it? After a little while he could hardly hear them at all. A little while after that, a voice crept past the bullets in his ears and began to speak to him. Eddie listened.

FIVE

"Pardon me, ma'am."

"Ayuh?" The postmistress was a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, dressed to meet the public with hair of a perfect beauty-shop blue-white.

"I'd like to leave a letter for some friends of mine," Callahan said. "They're from New York, and they'd likely be General Delivery customers." He had argued with Eddie that Calvin Tower, on the run from a bunch of dangerous hoods who would almost certainly still want his head on a stick, wouldn't do anything so dumb as sign up for mail. Eddie had reminded him of how Tower had been about his fucking precious first editions, and Callahan had finally agreed to at least try this.

"Summer folk?"

"Do ya," Callahan agreed, but that wasn't quite right. "I mean ayuh. Their names are Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau. I guess that isn't information you're supposed to give someone just in off the street, but-"

"Oh, we don't bother much about such things out in these parts," she said. Parts came out pahts. "Just let me check the list… we have so many between Memorial Day and Labor Day…"

She picked up a clipboard with three or four tattered sheets of paper on it from her side of the counter. Lots of handwritten names. She flicked over the first sheet to the second, then from the second to the third.

"Deepneau!" she said. "Ayuh, there's that one. Now…just let me see if I can find't'other 'un…"

"Never mind," Callahan said. All at once he felt uneasy, as though something had gone wrong back on the other side. He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing but the door, and the cave, and Eddie sitting there cross-legged with a book in his lap.

"Got somebody chasin ya?" the postlady asked, smiling.

Callahan laughed. It sounded forced and stupid to his own ears, but the postlady seemed to sense nothing wrong. "If I were to write Aaron a note and put it in a stamped envelope, would you see that he gets it when he comes in? Or when Mr. Tower comes in?"

"Oh, no need to buy a stamp," said she, comfortably. "Glad to do it."

Yes, it was like the Calla. Suddenly he liked this woman very much. Liked her big-big.

Callahan went to the counter by the window (the door doing a neat do-si-do around him when he turned) and jotted a note, first introducing himself as a friend of the man who had helped Tower with Jack Andolini. He told Deepneau and Tower to leave their car where it was, and to leave some of the lights on in the place where they were staying, and then to move somewhere close by-a barn, an abandoned camp, even a shed. To do it immediately. Leave a note with directions to where you are under the driver's side floormat of your car, or under the back porch step, he wrote. We'll be in touch. He hoped he was doing this right; they hadn't talked things out this far, and he'd never expected to have to do any cloak-and-dagger stuff. He signed as Roland had told him to: Callahan, of the Eld. Then, in spite of his growing unease, he added another line, almost slashing the letters into the paper: And make this trip to the post office your LAST. How stupid can you be???

He put the note in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote AARON DEEPNEAU OR CALVIN TOWER, GENERAL DELIVERY On the front.

He took it back to the counter. "I'll be happy to buy a stamp," he told her again.

"Nawp, just two cent' for the envelope and we're square."

He gave her the nickel left over from the store, took back his three cents change, and headed for the door. The ordinary one.

"Good luck to ye," the postlady called.

Callahan turned his head to look at her and say thanks. He caught a glimpse of the unfound door when he did, still open. What he didn't see was Eddie. Eddie was gone.

SIX

Callahan turned to that strange door as soon he was outside the post office. Ordinarily you couldn't do that, ordinarily it swung with you as neatly as a square-dance partner, but it seemed to know when you intended to step back through. Then you could face it.

The minute he was back the todash chimes seized him, seeming to etch patterns on the surface of his brain. From the bowels of the cave his mother cried, "There-now, Donnie, you've gone and let that nice boy commit suicide! He'll be in purgie forever, and it's your fault!"

Callahan barely heard. He dashed to the mouth of the cave, still carrying the Press-Herald he'd bought in the East Stoneham General Store under one arm. There was just time to see why the box hadn't closed, leaving him a prisoner in East Stoneham, Maine, circa 1977: there was a thick book sticking out of it Callahan even had time to read the title, Four Short Novels of Sherlock Holmes. Then he burst out into sunshine.

At first he saw nothing but the boulder on the path leading up to the mouth of the cave, and was sickeningly sure his mother's voice had told the truth. Then he looked left and saw Eddie ten feet away, at the end of the narrow path and tottering on the edge of the drop. His untucked shirt fluttered around the butt of Roland's big revolver. His normally sharp and rather foxy features now looked puffy and blank. It was the dazed face of a fighter out on his feet. His hair blew around his ears. He swayed forward… then his mouth tightened and his eyes became almost aware. He grasped an outcrop of rock and swayed back again.

He's fighting it, Callahan thought. And I'm sure he's fighting the good fight, but he's losing.

Calling out might actually send him over the edge; Callahan knew this with a gunslinger's intuition, always sharpest and most dependable in times of crisis. Instead of yelling he sprinted up the remaining stub of path and wound a hand in the tail of Eddie's shirt just as Eddie swayed forward again, this time removing his hand from the outcrop beside him and using it to cover his eyes in a gesture that was unmeaningly comic: Goodbye, cruel world.

If the shirt had torn, Eddie Dean would undoubtedly have been excused from ka's great game, but perhaps even the tails of homespun Calla Bryn Sturgis shirts (for that was what he was wearing) served ka. In any case the shirt didn't tear, and Callahan had held onto a great part of the physical strength he had built up during his years on the road. He yanked Eddie back and caught him in his arms, but not before the younger man's head struck the outcrop his hand had been on a few seconds before. His lashes fluttered and he looked at Callahan with a kind of stupid unrecognition. He said something that sounded like gibberish to Callahan: Ihsay ahkin fly-oo ower.

Callahan grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "What? I don't understand you!" Nor did he much want to, but he had to make some kind of contact, had to bring Eddie back from wherever the accursed thing in the box had taken him. "I don't… understand you?

This time the response was clearer: "It says I can fly to the Tower. You can let me go. I want to go!"

"You can't fly, Eddie." He wasn't sure that got through, so he put his head down-all the way, until he and Eddie were resting brow to brow, like lovers. "It was trying to kill you."

"No…" Eddie began, and then awareness came all the way back into his eyes. An inch from Callahan's own, they widened in understanding. "Yes."

Callahan lifted his head, but still kept a prudent grip on Eddie's shoulders. "Are you all right now?"

"Yeah. I guess so, at least. I was going along good, Father. Swear I was. I mean, the chimes were doing a number on me, but otherwise I was fine. I even grabbed a book and started to read." He looked around. 'Jesus, I hope I didn't lose it. Tower'll scalp me."

"You didn't lose it. You stuck it partway into the box, and it's a damned good thing you did. Otherwise the door would have shut and you'd be strawberry jam about seven hundred feet down."

Eddie looked over the edge and went completely pale. Callahan had just time enough to regret his frankness before Eddie vomited on his new shor'boots.

SEVEN

"It crept up on me, Father," he said when he could talk. "Lulled me and then jumped." "Yes."

"Did you get anything at all out of your time over there?"

"If they get my letter and do what it says, a great deal. You were right. Deepneau at least signed up for General Delivery. About Tower, I don't know." Callahan shook his head angrily.

"I think we're gonna find that Tower talked Deepneau into it," Eddie said. "Cal Tower still can't believe what he's gotten himself into, and after what just happened to me-almost happened to me-I've got some sympathy for that kind of thinking." He looked at what Callahan still had clamped under one arm. "What's that?"

"The newspaper," Callahan said, and offered it to Eddie. "Care to read about Golda Meir?"

EIGHT

Roland listened carefully that evening as Eddie and Callahan recounted their adventures in the Doorway Cave and beyond. The gunslinger seemed less interested in Eddie's near-death experience than he was in the similarities between Calla Bryn Sturgis and East Stoneham. He even asked Callahan to imitate the accent of the storekeeper and the postlady. This Callahan (a former Maine resident, after all) was able to do quite well.

"Do ya," said Roland, and then: "Ayuh. Do ya, ayuh." He sat thinking, one bootheel cocked up on the rail of the rectory porch.

"Will they be okay for awhile, do you think?" Eddie asked.

"I hope so," Roland replied. "If you want to worry about someone's life, worry about Deepneau's. If Balazar hasn't given up on the vacant lot, he has to keep Tower alive. Deepneau's nothing but a Watch Me chip now."

"Can we leave them until after the Wolves?"

"I don't see what choice we have."

"We could drop this whole business and go over there to East Overshoe and protect him!" Eddie said heatedly. "How about that? Listen, Roland, I'll tell you exactly why Tower talked his friend into signing up for General Delivery: somebody's got a book he wants, that's why. He was dickering for it and negotiations had reached the delicate stage when I showed up and persuaded him to head for the hills. But Tower… man, he's like a chimp with a handful of grain. He won't let go. If Balazar knows that, and he probably does, he won't need a zip code to find his man, just a list of the people Tower did business with. I hope to Christ that if there was a list, it burned up in the fire."

Roland was nodding. "I understand, but we can't leave here. We're promised."

Eddie thought it over, sighed, and shook his head. "What the hell, three and a half more days over here, seventeen over there before the deal-letter Tower signed expires. Things'll probably hold together that long." He paused, biting his lip. "Maybe."

"Is maybe the best we can do?" Callahan asked.

"Yeah," Eddie said. "For the time being, I guess it is."

NINE

The following morning, a badly frightened Susannah Dean sat in the privy at the foot of the hill, bent over, waiting for her current cycle of contractions to pass. She'd been having them for a little over a week now, but these were by far the strongest. She put her hands on her lower belly. The flesh there was alarmingly hard.

Oh dear God, what if I'm having it right now? What if this is it?

She tried to tell herself this couldn't be it, her water hadn't broken and you couldn't go into genuine labor until that happened. But what did she actually know about having babies? Very little. Even Rosalita Munoz, a midwife of great experience, wouldn't be able to help her much, because Rosa's career had been delivering human babies, of mothers who actually looked pregnant. Susannah looked less pregnant now than when they'd first arrived in the Calla. And if Roland was right about this baby-

It's not a baby. It's a chap, and it doesn't belong to me. It belongs to Mia, whoever she is. Mia, daughter of none.

The cramps ceased. Her lower belly relaxed, losing that stony feel. She laid a finger along the cleft of her vagina. It felt the same as ever. Surely she was going to be all right for another few days. She had to be. And while she'd agreed with Roland that there should be no more secrets in their ka-tet, she felt she had to keep this one. When the fighting finally started, it would be seven against forty or fifty. Maybe as many as seventy, if the Wolves stuck together in a single pack. They would have to be at their very best, their most fiercely concentrated. That meant no distractions. It also meant that she must be there to take her place.

She yanked up her jeans, did the buttons, and went out into the bright sunshine, absently rubbing at her left temple. She saw the new lock on the privy-just as Roland had asked-and began to smile. Then she looked down at her shadow and the smile froze. When she'd gone into the privy, her Dark Lady had stretched out nine-in-the-morning long. Now she was saying that if noon wasn't here, it would be shortly.

That's impossible. I was only in there a few minutes. Long enough to pee.

Perhaps that was true. Perhaps it was Mia who had been in there the rest of the time.

"No," she said. "That can't be so."

But Susannah thought it was. Mia wasn't ascendant-not yet-but she was rising. Getting ready to take over, if she could.

Please, she prayed, putting one hand out against the privy wall to brace herself. Just three more days, God. Give me three more days as myself, let us do our duty to the children of this place, and then what You will. Whatever You will. But please -

"Just three more," she murmured. "And if they do us down out there, it won't matter noway. Three more days, God. Hear me, I beg."

TEN

A day later, Eddie and Tian Jaffords went looking for Andy and came upon him standing by himself at the wide and dusty junction of East and River Roads, singing at the top of his…

"Nope," Eddie said as he and Tian approached, "can't say lungs, he doesn't have lungs."

"Cry pardon?" Tian asked.

"Nothing," Eddie said. "Doesn't matter." But, by the process of association-lungs to general anatomy-a question had occurred to him. "Tian, is there a doctor in the Calla?"

Tian looked at him with surprise and some amusement. "Not us, Eddie. Gut-tossers might do well for rich folks who have the time to go and the money to pay, but when us gets sick, we go to one of the Sisters."

"The Sisters of Oriza."

"Yar. If the medicine's good-it usually be-we get better. If it ain't, we get worse. In the end the ground cures all, d'ye see?"

"Yes," Eddie said, thinking how difficult it must be for them to fit roont children into such a view of things. Those who came back roont died eventually, but for years they just… lingered.

"There's only three boxes to a man, anyro'," Tian said as they approached the solitary singing robot. Off in the eastern distance, between Calla Bryn Sturgis and Thunderclap, Eddie could see scarves of dust rising toward the blue sky, aluiough it was perfecdy still where they were.

"Boxes?"

"Aye, say true," Tian said, then rapidly touched his brow, his breast, and his butt. "Headbox, titbox, shitbox." And he laughed heartily.

"You say that?" Eddie asked, smiling.

"Well… out here, between us, it does fine," Tian said, "although I guess no proper lady'd hear the boxes so described at her table." He touched his head, chest, and bottom again. "Thoughtbox, heartbox, ki'box."

Eddie heard key. "What's that last one mean? What kind of key unlocks your ass?"

Tian stopped. They were in plain view of Andy, but the robot ignored them completely, singing what sounded like opera in a language Eddie couldn't understand. Every now and then Andy held his arms up or crossed them, the gestures seemingly part of the song he was singing.

"Hear me," Tian said kindly. "A man is stacked, do ye ken. On top is his thoughts, which is the finest part of a man."

"Or a woman," Eddie said, smiling.

Tian nodded seriously. "Aye, or a woman, but we use man to stand for both, because woman was born of man's breath, kennit"

"Do you say so?" Eddie asked, thinking of some women's-lib types he'd met before leaving New York for Mid-World. He doubted they'd care for that idea much more than for the part of the Bible that said Eve had been made from Adam's rib.

"Let it be so," Tian agreed, "but it was Lady Oriza who gave birth to the first man, so the old folks will tell you. They say Can-ah, can-tah, annah, Oriza: 'All breath comes from the woman.' "

"So tell me about these boxes."

"Best and highest is the head, with all the head's ideas and dreams. Next is the heart, with all our feelings of love and sadness and joy and happiness-"

"The emotions."

Tian looked both puzzled and respectful. "Do you say so?"

"Well, where I come from we do, so let it be so."

"Ah." Tian nodded as if the concept were interesting but only borderline comprehensible. This time instead of touching his bottom, he patted his crotch. "In the last box is all what we'd call low-commala: have a fuck, take a shit, maybe want to do someone a meanness for no reason."

"And if you do have a reason?"

"Oh, but then it wouldn't be meanness, would it?" Tian asked, looking amused. "In that case, it'd come from the heart-box or the head-box."

"That's bizarre," Eddie said, but he supposed it wasn't, not really. In his mind's eye he could see three neatly stacked crates: head on top of heart, heart on top of all the animal functions and groundless rages people sometimes felt. He was particularly fascinated by Tian's use of the word meanness, as if it were some kind of behavioral landmark. Did that make sense, or didn't it? He would have to consider it carefully, and this wasn't the time.

Andy still stood gleaming in the sun, pouring out great gusts of song. Eddie had a vague memory of some kids back in the neighborhood, yelling out I'm the Barber of Seville-a, You must try my fucking skill-a and then running away, laughing like loons as they went.

"Andy!" Eddie said, and the robot broke off at once.

"Hile, Eddie, I see you well! Long days and pleasant nights!"

"Same to you," Eddie said. "How are you?"

"Fine, Eddie!" Andy said fervently. "I always enjoy singing before the first seminon."

"Seminon?"

"It's what we call the windstorms that come before true winter," Tian said, and pointed to the clouds of dust far beyond the Whye. "Yonder comes the first one; it'll be here either the day of Wolves or the day after, I judge."

"The day of, sai," said Andy. " 'Seminon comin, warm days go runnin.' So they say." He bent toward Eddie. Clickings came from inside his gleaming head. His blue eyes flashed on and off. "Eddie, I have cast a great horoscope, very long and complex, and it shows victory against the Wolves! A great victory, indeed! You will vanquish your enemies and then meet a beautiful lady!"

"I already have a beautiful lady," Eddie said, trying to keep his voice pleasant. He knew perfectly well what those rapidly flashing blue lights meant; the son of a bitch was laughing at him. Well, he thought, maybe you'll be laughing on the other side of your face a couple of days from now, Andy. I certainly hope so.

"So you do, but many a married man has had his jilly, as I told sai tian jaffords not so long ago."

"Not those who love their wives," Tian said. "I told you so then and I tell you now."

"Andy, old buddy," Eddie said earnestly, "we came out here in hopes that you'd do us a solid on the night before the Wolves come. Help us a little, you know."

There were several clicking sounds deep in Andy's chest, and this time when his eyes flashed, they almost seemed alarmed. "I would if I could, sai," Andy said, "oh yes, there's nothing I like more than helping my friends, but there are a great many things I can't do, much as I might like to."

"Because of your programming."

"Aye." The smug so-happy-to-see-you tone had gone out of Andy's voice. He sounded more like a machine now. Yeah, that's his fallback position, Eddie thought. That's Andy being careful. You've seen em come and go, haven't you, Andy? Sometimes they call you a useless bag of bolts and mostly they ignore you, but either way you end up walking over their bones and singing your songs, don't you? But not this time, pal. No, I don't think so.

"When were you built, Andy? I'm curious. When did you roll off the old LaMerk assembly line?"

"Long ago, sai." The blue eyes flashing very slowly now. Not laughing anymore.

"Two thousand years?"

"Longer, I believe. Sai, I know a song about drinking that you might like, it's very amusing-"

"Maybe another time. Listen, good buddy, if you're thousands of years old, how is it that you're programmed concerning the Wolves?"

From inside Andy there came a deep, reverberant clunk, as though something had broken. When he spoke again, it was in the dead, emotionless voice Eddie had first heard on the edge of Mid-Forest. The voice of Bosco Bob when ole Bosco was getting ready to cloud up and rain all over you.

"What's your password, sai Eddie?"

"Think we've been down this road before, haven't we?"

"Password. You have ten seconds. Nine… eight… seven…"

"That password shit's very convenient for you, isn't it?"

"Incorrect password, sai Eddie."

"Kinda like taking the Fifth."

"Two… one… zero. You may retry once. Would you retry, Eddie?"

Eddie gave him a sunny smile. "Does the seminon blow in the summertime, old buddy?"

More clicks and clacks. Andy's head, which had been tilted one way, now tilted the other. "I do not follow you, Eddie of NewYork."

"Sorry. I'm just being a silly old human bean, aren't I? No, I don't want to retry. At least not right now. Let me tell you what we'd like you to help us with, and you can tell us if your programming will allow you to do it. Does that sound fair?"

"Fair as fresh air, Eddie."

"Okay." Eddie reached up and took hold of Andy's thin metal arm. The surface was smooth and somehow unpleasant to the touch. Greasy. Oily. Eddie held on nonetheless, and lowered his voice to a confidential level. "I'm only telling you this because you're clearly good at keeping secrets."

"Oh, yes, sai Eddie! No one keeps a secret like Andy!" The robot was back on solid ground and back to his old self, smug and complacent.

"Well…" Eddie went up on tiptoe. "Bend down here."

Servomotors hummed inside Andy's casing-inside what would have been his heartbox, had he not been a high-tech tinman. He bent down. Eddie, meanwhile, stretched up even further, feeling absurdly like a small boy telling a secret.

"The Pere's got some guns from our level of the Tower," he murmured. "Good ones."

Andy's head swiveled around. His eyes glared out with a brilliance that could only have been astonishment. Eddie kept a poker face, but inside he was grinning.

"Say true, Eddie?"

"Say thankya."

"Pere says they're powerful," Tian said. "If they work, we can use em to blow the living bugger out of the Wolves. But we have to get em out north of town… and they're heavy. Can you help us load em in a bucka on Wolfs Eve, Andy?"

Silence. Clicks and clacks.

"Programming won't let him, I bet," Eddie said sadly. "Well, if we get enough strong backs-"

"I can help you," Andy said. "Where are these guns, sais?"

"Better not say just now," Eddie replied. "You meet us at the Pere's rectory early on Wolf's Eve, all right?"

"What hour would you have me?"

"How does six sound?"

"Six o' the clock. And how many guns will there be? Tell me that much, at least, so I may calculate the required energy levels."

My friend, it takes a bullshitter to recognize bullshit, Eddie thought merrily, but kept a straight face. "There be a dozen. Maybe fifteen. They weigh a couple of hundred pounds each. Do you know pounds, Andy?"

"Aye, say thankya. A pound is roughly four hundred and fifty grams. Sixteen ounces. 'A pint's a pound, the world around.' Those are big guns, sai Eddie, say true! Will they shoot?"

"We're pretty sure they will," Eddie said. "Aren't we, Tian?"

Tian nodded. "And you'll help us?"

"Aye, happy to. Six o' the clock, at the rectory."

"Thank you, Andy," Eddie said. He started away, then looked back. "You absolutely won't talk about this, will you?"

"No, sai, not if you tell me not to."

"That's just what I'm telling you. The last thing we want is for the Wolves to find out we've got some big guns to use against em."

"Of course not," Andy said. "What good news this is. Have a wonderful day, sais."

"And you, Andy," Eddie replied. "And you."

ELEVEN

Walking back toward Tian's place-it was only two miles distant from where they'd come upon Andy-Tian said, "Does he believe it?"

"I don't know," Eddie said, "but it surprised the shit out of him-did you feel that?"

"Yes," Tian said. "Yes, I did."

"He'll be there to see for himself, I guarantee that much."

Tian nodded, smiling. "Your dinh is clever."

"That he is," Eddie agreed. "That he is."

TWELVE

Once more Jake lay awake, looking up at the ceiling of Benny's room. Once more Oy lay on Benny's bed, curved into a comma with his nose beneath his squiggle of tail. Tomorrow night Jake would be back at Father Callahan's, back with his ka-tet, and he couldn't wait. Tomorrow would be Wolfs Eve, but this was only the eve of Wolf's Eve, and Roland had felt it would be best for Jake to stay this one last night at the Rocking B. "We don't want to raise suspicions this late in the game," he'd said. Jake understood, but boy, this was sick. The prospect of standing against the Wolves was bad enough. The thought of how Benny might look at him two days from now was even worse.

Maybe we'll all get killed, Jake thought. Then I won't have to worry about it.

In his distress, this idea actually had a certain attraction.

"Jake? You asleep?"

For a moment Jake considered faking it, but something inside sneered at such cowardice. "No," he said. "But I ought to try, Benny. I doubt if I'll get much tomorrow night."

"I guess not," Benny whispered back respectfully, and then: "You scared?"

" 'Course I am," Jake said. "What do you think I am, crazy?"

Benny got up on one elbow. "How many do you think you'll kill?"

Jake thought about it. It made him sick to think about it, way down in the pit of his stomach, but he thought about it anyway. "Dunno. If there's seventy, I guess I'll have to try to get ten."

He found himself thinking (with a mild sense of wonder) of Ms. Avery's English class. The hanging yellow globes with ghostly dead flies lying in their bellies. Lucas Hanson, who always tried to trip him when he was going up the aisle. Sentences diagrammed on the blackboard: beware the misplaced modifier. Petra Jesserling, who always wore A-line jumpers and had a crush on him (or so Mike Yanko claimed). The drone of Ms. Avery's voice. Outs at noon-what would be plain old lunch in a plain old public school. Sitting at his desk afterward and trying to stay awake. Was that boy, that neat Piper School boy, actually going out to the north of a farming town called Calla Bryn Sturgis to battle child-stealing monsters? Could that boy be lying dead thirty-six hours from now with his guts in a steaming pile behind him, blown out of his back and into the dirt by something called a sneetch? Surely that wasn't possible, was it? The housekeeper, Mrs. Shaw, had cut the crusts off his sandwiches and sometimes called him 'Bama. His father had taught him how to calculate a fifteen percent tip. Such boys surely did not go out to die with guns in their hands. Did they?

"I bet you get twenty!" Benny said. "Boy, I wish I could be with you! We'd fight side by side! Pow! Pow! Pow! Then we'd reload!"

Jake sat up and looked at Benny with real curiosity. "Would you?" he asked. "If you could?"

Benny thought about it. His face changed, was suddenly older and wiser. He shook his head. "Nah. I'd be scared. Aren't you really scared? Say true?"

"Scared to death," Jake said simply.

"Of dying?"

"Yeah, but I'm even more scared of fucking up."

"You won't."

Easy for you to say, Jake thought.

"If I have to go with the little kids, at least I'm glad my father's going, too," Benny said. "He's taking his bah. You ever seen him shoot?"

"No."

"Well, he's good with it. If any of the Wolves get past you guys, he'll take care of them. He'll find that gill-place on their chests, and pow!"

What if Benny knew the gill-place was a lie? Jake wondered. False information this boy's father would hopefully pass on? What if he knew-

Eddie spoke up in his head, Eddie with his wise-ass Brooklyn accent in full flower. Yeah, and if fish had bicycles, every fuckin river'd be the Tour de France.

"Benny, I really have to try to get some sleep."

Benny lay back down. Jake did the same, and resumed looking up at the ceiling. All at once he hated it that Oy was on Benny's bed, that Oy had taken so naturally to the other boy. All at once he hated everything about everything. The hours until morning, when he could pack, mount his borrowed pony, and ride back to town, seemed to stretch out into infinity.

"Jake?"

"What, Benny, what?"

"I'm sorry. I just wanted to say I'm glad you came here. We had some fun, didn't we?"

"Yeah," Jake said, and thought: No one would believe he's older than me. He sounds about… I don't know… five, or something. That was mean, but Jake had an idea that if he wasn't mean, he might actually start to cry. He hated Roland for sentencing him to this last night at the Rocking B. "Yeah, fun big-big."

"I'm gonna miss you. But I'll bet they put up a statue of you guys in the Pavilion, or something." Guys was a word Benny had picked up from Jake, and he used it every chance he got.

"I'll miss you, too," Jake said.

"You're lucky, getting to follow the Beam and travel places. I'll probably be here in this shitty town the rest of my life."

No, you won't. You and your Da' are going to do plenty of wandering… if you're lucky and they let you out of town, that is. What you're going to do, I think, is spend the rest of your life dreaming about this shitty little town. About a place that was home. And it's my doing. I saw... and I told. But what else could I do?

"Jake?"

He could stand no more. It would drive him mad. "Go to sleep, Benny. And let me go to sleep."

"Okay."

Benny rolled over to face the wall. In a little while his breathing slowed. A little while after that, he began snoring. Jake lay awake until nearly midnight, and then he went to sleep, too. And had a dream. In it Roland was down on his knees in the dust of East Road, facing a great horde of oncoming Wolves that stretched from the bluffs to the river. He was trying to reload, but both of his hands were stiff and one was short two fingers. The bullets fell uselessly in front of him. He was still trying to load his great revolver when the Wolves rode him down.

THIRTEEN

Dawn of Wolf's Eve. Eddie and Susannah stood at the window of the Pere's guest room, looking down the slope of lawn to Rosa's cottage.

"He's found something with her," Susannah said. "I'm glad for him."

Eddie nodded. "How you feeling?"

She smiled up at him. "I'm fine," she said, and meant it. "What about you, sugar?"

"I'll miss sleeping in a real bed with a roof over my head, and I'm anxious to get to it, but otherwise I'm fine, too."

"Things go wrong, you won't have to worry about the accommodations."

"That's true," Eddie said, "but I don't think they're going to go wrong. Do you?"

Before she could answer, a gust of wind shook the house and whistled beneath the eaves. The seminon saying good day to ya, Eddie guessed.

"I don't like that wind," she said. "It's a wild-card."

Eddie opened his mouth.

"And if you say anything about ka, I'll punch you in the nose."

Eddie closed his mouth again and mimed zipping it shut. Susannah went to his nose anyway, a brief touch of knuckles like a feather. "We've got a fine chance to win," she said. "They've had everything their own way for a long time, and it's made em fat. Like Blaine."

"Yeah. Like Blaine."

She put a hand on his hip and turned him to her. "But things could go wrong, so I want to tell you something while it's just the two of us, Eddie. I want to tell you how much I love you." She spoke simply, with no drama.

"I know you do," he said, "but I'll be damned if I know why."

"Because you make me feel whole," she said. "When I was younger, I used to vacillate between thinking love was this great and glorious mystery and thinking it was just something a bunch of Hollywood movie producers made up to sell more tickets back in the Depression, when Dish Night kind of played out."

Eddie laughed.

"Now I think that all of us are born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You… Eddie, you fill me up." She took his hand and began to lead him back to the bed. "And right now I'd like you to fill me up the other way."

"Suze, is it safe?"

"I don't know," she said, "and I don't care."

They made love slowly, the pace only building near the end. She cried out softly against his shoulder, and in the instant before his own climax blotted out reflection, Eddie thought: I'm going to lose her if I'm not careful. I don't know how I know that… but I do. She'll just disappear.

"I love you, too," he said when they were finished and lying side by side again.

"Yes." She took his hand. "I know. I'm glad."

"It's good to make someone glad," he said. "I didn't use to know that."

"It's all right," Susannah said, and kissed the corner of his mouth. "You learn fast."

FOURTEEN

There was a rocker in Rosa's little living room. The gunslinger sat in it naked, holding a clay saucer in one hand. He was smoking and looking out at the sunrise. He wasn't sure he would ever again see it rise from this place.

Rosa came out of the bedroom, also naked, and stood in the doorway looking at him. "How're y'bones, tell me, I beg?"

Roland nodded. "That oil of yours is a wonder."

'"Twon'tlast."

"No," Roland said. "But there's another world-my friends' world-and maybe they have something there that will. I've got a feeling we'll be going there soon."

"More fighting to do?"

"I think so, yes."

"You won't be back this way in any case, will you?"

Roland looked at her. "No."

"Are you tired, Roland?"

"To death," said he.

"Come back to bed a little while, then, will ya not?"

He crushed out his smoke and stood. He smiled. It was a younger man's smile. "Say thankya."

"Thee's a good man, Roland of Gilead."

He considered this, then slowly shook his head. "All my life I've had the fastest hands, but at being good I was always a little too slow."

She held out a hand to him. "Come ye, Roland. Come commala." And he went to her.

FIFTEEN

Early that afternoon, Roland, Eddie, Jake, and Pere Callahan rode out the East Road-which was actually a north road at this point along the winding Devar-Tete Whye-with shovels concealed in the bedrolls at the backs of their saddles. Susannah had been excused from this duty on account of her pregnancy. She had joined the Sisters of Oriza at the Pavilion, where a larger tent was being erected and preparations for a huge evening meal were already going forward. When they left, Calla Bryn Sturgis had already begun to fill up, as if for a Fair-Day. But there was no whooping and hollering, no impudent rattle of firecrackers, no rides being set up on the Green. They had seen neither Andy nor Ben Slightman, and that was good.

"Tian?" Roland asked Eddie, breaking the rather heavy silence among them.

"He'll meet me at the rectory. Five o'clock."

"Good," Roland said. "If we're not done out here by four, you're excused to ride back on your own."

"I'll go with you, if you like," Callahan said. The Chinese believed that if you saved a man's life, you were responsible for him ever after. Callahan had never given the idea much thought, but after pulling Eddie back from the ledge above the Doorway Cave, it seemed to him there might be truth in the notion.

"Better you stay with us," Roland said. "Eddie can take care of this. I've got another job for you out here. Besides digging, I mean."

"Oh? And what might that be?" Callahan asked.

Roland pointed at the dust-devils twisting and whirling ahead of them on the road. "Pray away this damned wind. And the sooner the better. Before tomorrow morning, certainly."

"Are you worried about the ditch?" Jake asked.

"The ditch'll be fine," Roland said. "It's the Sisters' Orizas I'm worried about. Throwing the plate is delicate work under the best of circumstances. If it's blowing up a gale out here when the Wolves come, the possibilities for things to go wrong-" He tossed his hand at the dusty horizon, giving it a distinctive (and fatalistic) Calla twist. "Delah."

Callahan, however, was smiling. "I'll be glad to offer a prayer," he said, "but look east before you grow too concerned. Doya, I beg."

They turned that way in their saddles. Corn-the crop now over, the picked plants standing in sloping, skeletal rows-ran down to the rice-fields. Beyond the rice was the river. Beyond the river was the end of the borderlands. There, dust-devils forty feet high spun and jerked and sometimes collided. They made the ones dancing on their side of die river look like naughty children by comparison.

"The seminon often reaches the Whye and then turns back," Callahan said. "According to the old folks, Lord Seminon begs Lady Oriza to make him welcome when he reaches the water and she often bars his passage out of jealousy. You see-"

"Seminon married her sissa," Jake said. "Lady Riza wanted him for herself-a marriage of wind and rice-and she's still p.o.'d about it."

"How did you know that?" Callahan asked, both amused and astonished.

"Benny told me," Jake said, and said no more. Thinking of their long discussions (sometimes in the hayloft, sometimes lazing on the bank of the river) and their eager exchanges of legend made him feel sad and hurt.

Callahan was nodding. "That's the story, all right. I imagine it's actually a weather phenomenon-cold air over there, warm air rising off the water, something like that-but whatever it is, this one shows every sign of going back where it came from."

The wind dashed grit in his face, as if to prove him wrong, and Callahan laughed. "This'll be over by first light tomorrow, I almost guarantee you. But-"

"Almost's not good enough, Pere."

"What I was going to say, Roland, is that since I know almost's not good enough, I'll gladly send up a prayer."

"Tell ya thanks." The gunslinger turned to Eddie, and pointed the first two fingers of his left hand at his own face. "The eyes, right?"

"The eyes," Eddie agreed. "And the password. If it's not nineteen, it'll be ninety-nine."

"You don't know that for sure."

"I know," Eddie said.

"Still… be careful."

"I will."

A few minutes later they reached the place where, on their right, a rocky track wandered off into the arroyo country, toward the Gloria and Redbirds One and Two. The folken assumed that the buckas would be left here, and they were correct. They also assumed that the children and their minders would then walk up the track to one mine or the other. In this they were wrong.

Soon three of them were digging on the west side of the road, a fourth always standing watch. No one came-the folken from this far out were already in town-and the work went quickly enough. At four o'clock, Eddie left the others to finish up and rode back to town to meet Tian Jaffords with one of Roland's revolvers holstered on his hip.

SIXTEEN

Tian had brought his bah. When Eddie told him to leave it on the Pere's porch, the farmer gave him an unhappy, uncertain stare.

"He won't be surprised to see me packing iron, but he might have questions if he saw you with that thing," Eddie said. This was it, the true beginning of their stand, and now that it had come, Eddie felt calm. His heart was beating slowly and steadily. His vision seemed to have clarified; he could see each shadow cast by each individual blade of grass on the rectory lawn. "He's strong, from what I've heard. And very quick when he needs to be. Let it be my play."

"Then why am I here?"

Because even a smart robot won't expect trouble if I've got a clodhopper like you with me was the actual answer, but giving it wouldn't be very diplomatic.

"Insurance," Eddie said. "Come on."

They walked down to the privy. Eddie had used it many times during the last few weeks, and always with pleasure-there were stacks of soft grasses for the clean-up phase, and you didn't have to concern yourself with poison flurry-but he'd not examined the outside closely until now. It was a wood structure, tall and solid, but he had no doubt Andy could demolish it in short order if he really wanted to. If they gave him a chance to.

Rosa came to the back door of her cottage and looked out at them, holding a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. "How do ya, Eddie?"

"Fine so far, Rosie, but you better go back inside. There's gonna be a scuffle."

"Say true? I've got a stack of plates-"

"I don't think Rizas'd help much in this case," Eddie said. "I guess it wouldn't hurt if you stood by, though."

She nodded and went back inside without another word.

The men sat down, flanking the open door of the privy with its new bolt-lock. Tian tried to roll a smoke. The first one fell apart in his shaking fingers and he had to try again. "I'm not good at this sort of thing," he said, and Eddie understood he wasn't talking about the fine art of cigarette-making.

"It's all right."

Tian peered at him hopefully. "Do ya say so?"

"I do, so let it be so."

Promptly at six o'clock (The bastard's probably got a clock set tight down to millionths of a second inside him, Eddie thought), Andy came around the rectory-house, his shadow trailing out long and spidery on the grass in front of him. He saw them. His blue eyes flashed. He raised a hand in greeting. The setting sun reflected off his arm, making it look as though it had been dipped in blood. Eddie raised his own hand in return and stood up, smiling. He wondered if all the thinking-machines that still worked in this rundown world had turned against their masters, and if so, why.

"Just be cool and let me do the talking," he said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Yes, all right."

"Eddie!" Andy cried. "Tian Jaffords! How good to see you both! And weapons to use against the Wolves! My! Where are they?"

"Stacked in the shithouse," Eddie said. "We can get a wagon down here once they're out, but they're heavy… and there isn't much room to move around in there…"

He stood aside. Andy came on. His eyes were flashing, but not in laughter now. They were so brilliant Eddie had to squint- it was like looking at flashbulbs.

"I'm sure I can get them out," Andy said. "How good it is to help! How often I've regretted how little my programming allows me to…"

He was standing in the privy door now, bent slightly at the thighs to get his metallic barrel of a head below the level of the jamb. Eddie drew Roland's gun. As always, the sandalwood grip felt smooth and eager against his palm.

"Cry your pardon, Eddie of New York, but I see no guns."

"No," Eddie agreed. "Me either. Actually all I see is a fucking traitor who teaches songs to the kids and then sends them to be-"

Andy turned with terrible liquid speed. To Eddie's ears the hum of the servos in his neck seemed very loud. They were standing less than three feet apart, point-blank range. "May it do ya fine, you stainless-steel bastard," Eddie said, and fired twice. The reports were deafening in the evening stillness. Andy's eyes exploded and went dark. Tian cried out.

"NO!"Andy screamed in an amplified voice. It was so loud that it made the gunshots seem no more than popping corks by comparison. "NO, MY EYES, I CAN'T SEE, OH NO, VISION ZERO, MY EYES, MY EYES-"

The scrawny stainless-steel arms flew up to the shattered sockets, where blue sparks were now jumping erratically. Andy's legs straightened, and his barrel of a head ripped through the top of the privy's doorway, throwing chunks of board left and right.

"NO, NO, NO, I CAN'T SEE, VISION ZERO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, AMBUSH, ATTACK, I'M BLIND, CODE 7, CODE 7, CODE 7!"

"Help me push him, Tian!" Eddie shouted, dropping the gun back into its holster. But Tian was frozen, gawking at the robot (whose head had now vanished inside the broken doorway), and Eddie had no time to wait. He lunged forward and planted his outstretched palms on the plate giving Andy's name, function, and serial number. The robot was amazingly heavy (Eddie's first thought was that it was like pushing a parking garage), but it was also blind, surprised, and off-balance. It stumbled backward, and suddenly the amplified words cut off. What replaced them was an unearthly shrieking siren. Eddie thought it would split his head. He grabbed the door and swung it shut. There was a huge, ragged gap at the top, but the door still closed flush. Eddie ran the new bolt, which was as thick as his wrist.

From within the privy, the siren shrieked and warbled.

Rosa came running with a plate in both hands. Her eyes were huge. "What is it? In the name of God and the Man Jesus, what is it?"

Before Eddie could answer, a tremendous blow shook the privy on its foundations. It actually moved to the right, disclosing the edge of the hole beneath it.

"It's Andy," he said. "I think he just pulled up a horoscope he doesn't much care f-"

"YOU BASTARDS!" This voice was totally unlike Andy's usual three forms of address: smarmy, self-satisfied, or falsely subservient. "YOU BASTARDS! COZENING BASTARDS! I'LL KILL YOU I'M BLIND, OH, I'M BLIND, CODE 7! CODE 7!" The words ceased and the siren recommenced. Rosa dropped her plates and clapped her hands over her ears.

Another blow slammed against the side of the privy, and this time two of the stout boards bowed outward. The next one broke them. Andy's arm flashed through, gleaming red in the light, the four jointed fingers at the end opening and closing spasmodically. In the distance, Eddie could hear the crazy barking of dogs.

"He's going to get out, Eddie!" Tian shouted, grabbing Eddie's shoulder. "He's going to get out!"

Eddie shook the hand off and stepped to the door. There was another crashing blow. More broken boards popped off the side of the privy. The lawn was scattered with them now. But he couldn't shout against the wail of the siren, it was just too loud. He waited, and before Andy hammered the side of the privy again, it cut off.

"BASTARDS!" Andy screamed. "I'LL KILL YOU! DIRECTIVE 20, CODE 7! I'M BLIND, ZERO VISION, YOU COWARDLY-"

"Andy, Messenger Robot!" Eddie shouted. He had jotted the serial number on one of Callahan's precious scraps of paper, with Callahan's stub of pencil, and now he read it off. "DNF-44821-V-63! Password!"

The frenzied blows and amplified shouting ceased as soon as Eddie finished giving the serial number, yet even the silence wasn't silent; his ears still rang with the hellish shriek of the siren. There was a clank of metal and the click of relays. Then: "This is DNF-44821-V-63. Please give password." A pause, and then, tonelessly: "You ambushing bastard Eddie Dean of New York. You have ten seconds. Nine…"

"Nineteen," Eddie said through the door.

"Incorrect password." And, tin man or not, there was no mistaking the furious pleasure in Andy's voice. "Eight… seven…"

"Ninety-nine."

"Incorrect password." Now what Eddie heard was triumph. He had time to regret his insane cockiness out on the road. Time to see the look of terror which passed between Rosa and Tian. Time to realize the dogs were still barking.

"Five… four…"

Not nineteen; not ninety-nine. What else was there? What in the name of Christ turned the bastard off?

"… three…"

What flashed into his mind, as bright as Andy's eyes had been before Roland's big revolver turned them dark, was the verse scrawled on the fence around the vacant lot, spray-painted in dusty rose-pink letters: Oh SUSANNAH-MIO, divided girl of mine, Done parked her RIG in the DIXIE PIG, in the year of-

"… two…"

Not one or the other; both. Which was why the damned robot hadn't cut him off after a single incorrect try. He hadn't been incorrect, not exactly.

"Nineteen-ninety-nine!"'Eddie screamed through the door.

From behind it, utter silence. Eddie waited for the siren to start up again, waited for Andy to resume bashing his way out of the privy. He'd tell Tian and Rosa to run, try to cover them-

The voice that spoke from inside the battered building was colorless and flat: the voice of a machine. Both the fake smarminess and the genuine fury were gone. Andy as generations of Calla-folken had known him was gone, and for good.

"Thank you," the voice said. "I am Andy, a messenger robot, many other functions. Serial number DNF-44821-V-63. How may I help?"

"By shutting yourself down."

Silence from the privy.

"Do you understand what I'm asking?"

A small, horrified voice said, "Please don't make me. You bad man. Oh, you bad man."

"Shut yourself down now."

A longer silence. Rosa stood with her hand pressed against her throat. Several men appeared around the side of the Pere's house, armed with various homely weapons. Rosa waved them back.

"DNF-44821-V-63, comply!"

"Yes, Eddie of New York. I will shut myself down." A horrible self-pitying sadness had crept into Andy's new small voice. It made Eddie's skin crawl. "Andy is blind and will shut down. Are you aware that with my main power cells ninety-eight per cent depleted, I may never be able to power up again?"

Eddie remembered the vast roont twins out at the Jaffords smallhold-Tia and Zalman-and then thought of all the others like them this unlucky town had known over the years. He dwelled particularly on the Tavery twins, so bright and quick and eager to please. And so beautiful. "Never won't be long enough," he said, "but I guess it'll have to do. Palaver's done, Andy. Shut down."

Another silence from within the half-busted privy. Tian and Rosa crept up to either side of Eddie and the three of them stood together in front of the locked door. Rosa gripped Eddie's forearm. He shook her off immediately. He wanted his hand free in case he had to draw. Although where he would shoot now that Andy's eyes were gone, he didn't know.

When Andy spoke again, it was in a toneless amplified voice that made Tian and Rosa gasp and step back. Eddie stayed where he was. He had heard a voice like this and words like this once before, in the clearing of the great bear. Andy's rap wasn't quite the same, but close enough for government work.

"DNF-44821-V-63 IS SHUTTING DOWN! ALL SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 13 PER CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY, MESSENGER ROBOT, MANY OTHER FUNCTIONS! PLEASE REPORT MY LOCATION TO LAMERK INDUSTRIES OR NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD! CALL 1-900-54! REWARD IS OFFERED! REPEAT, REWARD IS OFFERED!" There was a click as the message recycled. "DNF-44821-V-63 IS SHUTTING DOWN! ALL SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 19 PER CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY-"

"You were Andy," Eddie said softly. He turned to Tian and Rosa, and had to smile at their scared-children's faces. "It's all right," he said. "It's over. He'll go on blaring like that for awhile, and then he'll be done. You can turn him into a… I don't know… a planter, or something."

"I think we'll tear up the floor and bury him right there," Rosa said, nodding at the privy.

Eddie's smile widened and became a grin. He liked the idea of burying Andy in shit. He liked that idea very well.

SEVENTEEN

As dusk ended and night deepened, Roland sat on the edge of the bandstand and watched the Calla-folken tuck into their great dinner. Every one of them knew it might be the last meal they'd ever eat together, that tomorrow night at ths time their nice little town might lie in smoking ruins all about them, but still they were cheerful. And not, Roland thought, entirely for the sake of the children. There was great relief in finally deciding to do the right tiling. Even when folk knew the price was apt to be high, that relief came. A kind of giddiness. Most of these people would sleep on the Green tonight with their children and grandchildren in the tent nearby, and here they would stay, their faces turned to the northeast of town, waiting for the outcome of the battle. There would be gunshots, they reckoned (it was a sound many of them had never heard), and then the dust-cloud that marked the Wolves would either dissipate, turn back the way it had come, or roll on toward town. If the last, the folken would scatter and wait for the burning to commence.

When it was over, they would be refugees in their own place. Would they rebuild, if that was how the cards fell? Roland doubted it. With no children to build for-because the Wolves would take them all this time if they won, the gunslinger did not doubt it-there would be no reason. At the end of the next cycle, this place would be a ghost town.

"Cry your pardon, sai."

Roland looked around. There stood Wayne Overholser, with his hat in his hands. Standing thus, he looked more like a wandering saddle-tramp down on his luck than the Calla's big farmer. His eyes were large and somehow mournful.

"No need to cry my pardon when I'm still wearing the dayrider hat you gave me," Roland said mildly.

"Yar, but…" Overholser trailed off, thought of how he wanted to go on, and then seemed to decide to fly straight at it. "Reuben Caverra was one of the fellas you meant to take to guard the children during the fight, wasn't he?"

"Aye?"

"His gut busted this morning." Overholser touched his own swelling belly about where his appendix might have been. "He lays home feverish and raving. He'll likely die of the bloodmuck. Some get better, aye, but not many."

"I'm sorry to hear it," Roland said, trying to think who would be best to replace Caverra, a hulk of a man who had impressed Roland as not knowing much about fear and probably nothing at all about cowardice.

"Take me instea', would ye?"

Roland eyed him.

"Please, gunslinger. I can't stand aside. I thought I could- that I must-but I can't. It's making me sick." And yes, Roland thought, he did look sick.

"Does your wife know, Wayne?"

"Aye."

"And says aye?"

"She does."

Roland nodded. "Be here half an hour before dawn."

A look of intense, almost painful gratitude filled Overholser's face and made him look weirdly young. "Thankee, Roland! Say thankee! Big-big!"

"Glad to have you. Now listen to me a minute."

"Aye?"

"Things won't be just the way I told them at the big meeting."

"Because of Andy, y'mean."

"Yes, partly that."

"What else? You don't mean to say there's another traitor, do'ee? You don't mean to say that?"

"All I mean to say is that if you want to come with us, you have to roll with us. Do you ken?"

"Yes, Roland, Very well."

Overholser thanked him again for the chance to die north of town and then hurried off with his hat still in his hands. Before Roland could change his mind, perhaps.

Eddie came over. "Overholser's coming to the dance?"

"Looks like it. How much trouble did you have with Andy?"

"It went all right," Eddie said, not wanting to admit that he, Tian, and Rosalita had probably all come within a second of being toast. In the distance, they could still hear him bellowing. But probably not for much longer; the amplified voice was claiming shutdown was seventy-nine per cent complete.

"I think you did very well."

A compliment from Roland always made Eddie feel like king of the world, but he tried not to show it. "As long as we do well tomorrow."

"Susannah?"

"Seems fine."

"No…?" Roland rubbed above his left eyebrow.

"No, not that I've seen."

"And no talking short and sharp?"

"No, she's good for it. Practiced with her plates all the time you guys were digging." Eddie tipped his chin toward Jake, who was sitting by himself on a swing with Oy at his feet. "That's the one I'm worried about. I'll be glad to get him out of here. This has been hard for him."

"It'll be harder on the other boy," Roland said, and stood up. "I'm going back to Pere's. Going to get some sleep."

"Can you sleep?"

"Oh, yes," Roland said. "With the help of Rosa's cat-oil, I'll sleep like a rock. You and Susannah and Jake should also try."

"Okay."

Roland nodded somberly. "I'll wake you tomorrow morning. We'll ride down here together."

"And we'll fight."

"Yes," Roland said. He looked at Eddie. His blue eyes gleamed in the glow of the torches. "We'll fight. Until they're dead, or we are."

ONE

See this now, see it very well:

Here is a road as wide and as well-maintained as any secondary road in America, but of the smooth packed dirt the Calla-folk call oggan. Ditches for runoff border both sides; here and there neat and well-maintained wooden culverts run beneath the oggan. In the faint, unearthly light that comes before dawn, a dozen bucka waggons-they are the kind driven by the Manni, with rounded canvas tops-roll along the road. The canvas is bright clean white, to reflect the sun and keep the interiors cool on hot summer days, and they look like strange, low-floating clouds. The cumulus kind, may it do ya. Each waggon is drawn by a team of six mules or four horses. On the seat of each, driving, are either a pair of fighters or of designated child-minders. Overholser is driving the lead waggon, with Margaret Eisenhart beside him. Next in line comes Roland of Gilead, mated with Ben Slightman. Fifth is Tian and Zalia Jaffords. Seventh is Eddie and Susannah Dean. Susannah's wheelchair is folded up in the waggon behind her. Bucky and Annabelle Javier are in charge of the tenth. On the peak-seat of the last waggon are Father Donald Callahan and Rosalita Munoz.

Inside the buckas are ninety-nine children. The left-over twin-the one that makes for an odd number-is Benny Slightman, of course. He is riding in the last waggon. (He felt uncomfortable about going with his father.) The children don't speak. Some of the younger ones have gone back to sleep; they will have to be awakened shortly, when the waggons reach their destination. Ahead, now less than a mile, is the place where the path into the arroyo country splits off to the left. On the right, the land runs down a mild slope to the river. All the drivers keep looking to the east, toward the constant darkness that is Thunderclap. They are watching for an approaching dust-cloud. There is none. Not yet. Even the seminon winds have fallen still. Callahan's prayers seem to have been answered, at least in that regard.

TWO

Ben Slightman, sitting next to Roland on the bucka's peak-seat, spoke in a voice so low the gunslinger could barely hear him. "What will'ee do to me, then?"

If asked, when the waggons set out from Calla Bryn Sturgis, to give odds on Slightman's surviving this day, Roland might have put them at five in a hundred. Surely no better. There were two crucial questions that needed to be asked and then answered correctly. The first had to come from Slightman himself. Roland hadn't really expected the man to ask it, but here it was, out of his mouth. Roland turned his head and looked at him.

Vaughn Eisenhart's foreman was very pale, but he took off his spectacles and met Roland's gaze. The gunslinger ascribed no special courage to this. Surely Slightman the Elder had had time to take Roland's measure and knew that he must look the gunslinger in the eye if he was to have any hope at all, little as he might like to do it.

"Yar, I know," Slightman said. His voice was steady, at least so far. "Know what? That you know."

"Have since we took your pard, I suppose," Roland said. The word was deliberately sarcastic (sarcasm was the only form of humor Roland truly understood), and Slightman winced at it: pard. Your pard. But he nodded, eyes still steady on Roland's.

"I had to figure that if you knew about Andy, you knew about me. Although he'd never have peached on me. Such wasn't in his programming." At last it was too much and he could bear the eye-contact no longer. He looked down, biting his lip. "Mostly I knew because of Jake."

Roland wasn't able to keep the surprise out of his face.

"He changed. He didn't mean to, not as trig as he is-and as brave-but he did. Not toward me, toward my boy. Over the last week, week and a half. Benny was only… well, puzzled, I guess you'd say. He felt something but didn't know what it was. I did. It was like your boy didn't want to be around him anymore. I asked myself what could do that. The answer seemed pretty clear. Clear as short beer, do ya."

Roland was falling behind Overholser's waggon. He flicked the reins over the backs of his own team. They moved a little faster. From behind them came the quiet sound of the children, some talking now but most snoring, and the muted jingle of trace. He'd asked Jake to collect up a small box of children's possessions, and had seen the boy doing it. He was a good boy who never put off a chore. This morning he wore a dayrider hat to keep the sun out of his eyes, and his father's gun. He rode on the seat of the eleventh waggon, with one of the Estrada men. He guessed that Slightman had a good boy, too, which had gone far toward making this the mess that it was.

"Jake was at the Dogan one night when you and Andy were there, passing on news of your neighbors," Roland said. On the seat beside him, Slightman winced like a man who has just been punched in the belly.

"There," he said. "Yes, I could almost sense… or thought I could…" A longer pause, and then: "Fuck."

Roland looked east. A little brighter over there now, but still no dust. Which was good. Once the dust appeared, the Wolves would come in a rush. Their gray horses would be fast. Continuing on, speaking almost idly, Roland asked the other question. If Slightman answered in the negative, he wouldn't live to see the coming of the Wolves no matter how fast their gray horses rode.

"If you'd found him, Slightman-if you'd found my boy- would you have killed him?"

Slightman put his spectacles back on as he struggled with it. Roland couldn't tell if he understood the importance of the question or not. He waited to see if the father of Jake's friend would live or die. He'd have to decide quickly; they were approaching the place where the waggons would stop and the children would get down.

The man at last raised his head and met Roland's eyes again. He opened his mouth to speak and couldn't. The fact of the matter was clear enough: he could answer the gunslinger's question, or he could look into the gunslinger's face, but he could not do both at the same time.

Dropping his gaze back to the splintery wood between his feet, Slightman said: "Yes, I reckon we would have killed him." A pause. A nod. When he moved his head a tear fell from one eye and splashed on the wood of the peak-seat's floor. "Yar, what else?" Now he looked up; now he could meet Roland's eyes again, and when he did he saw his fate had been decided. "Make it quick," said he, "and don't let me boy see it happen. Beg ya please."

Roland flapped the reins over the mules' backs again. Then he said: "I won't be the one to stop your miserable breath."

Slightman's breathdid stop. Telling the gunslinger that yes, he would have killed a twelve-year-old boy to protect his secret, his face had had a kind of strained nobility. Now it wore hope instead, and hope made it ugly. Nearly grotesque. Then he let his breath out in a ragged sigh and said, "You're fooling with me. A-teasing me. You're going to kill me, all right. Why would you not?"

"A coward judges all he sees by what he is," Roland remarked. "I'd not kill you unless I had to, Slightman, because I love my own boy. You must understand that much, don't you? To love a boy?"

"Yar." Slightman lowered his head again and began to rub the back of his sunburned neck. The neck he must have thought would end this day packed in dirt.

"But you have to understand something. For your own good and Benny's as much as ours. If the Wolves win, you will die. That much you can be sure of. 'Take it to the bank,' Eddie and Susannah say."

Slightman was looking at him again, eyes narrowed behind his specs.

"Hear me well, Slightman, and take understanding from what I say. We're not going to be where the Wolves think we're going to be, and neither are the kiddies. Win or lose, this time they're going to leave some bodies behind. And win or lose, they'll know they were misled. Who was there in Calla Bryn Sturgis to mislead them? Only two. Andy and Ben Slightman. Andy's shut down, gone beyond the reach of their vengeance." He gave Slightman a smile that was as cold as the earth's north end. "But you're not. Nor the only one you care for in your poor excuse for a heart."

Slightman sat considering this. It was clearly a new idea to him, but once he saw the logic of it, it was undeniable.

"They'll likely think you switched sides a-purpose," Roland said, "but even if you could convince them it was an accident, they'd kill you just the same. And your son, as well. For vengeance."

A red stain had seeped into the man's cheeks as the gunslinger spoke -roses of shame, Roland supposed-but as he considered the probability of his son's murder at the hands of the Wolves, he grew white once more. Or perhaps it was the thought of Benny being taken east that did it-being taken east and roont. "I'm sorry," he said. "Sorry for what I've done."

"Balls to your sorry," Roland said. "Ka works and the world moves on."

Slightman made no reply.

"I'm disposed to send you with the kids, just as I said I would," Roland told him. "If things go as I hope, you won't see a single moment's action. If things don't go as I hope, you want to remember Sarey Adams is boss of that shooting match, and if I talk to her after, you want to hope that she says you did everything you were told to do." When this met with only more silence from Slightman, the gunslinger spoke sharply. "Tell me you understand, gods damn you. I want to hear "Yes, Roland, I ken.'"

"Yes, Roland, I ken very well." There was a pause. "If we do win, will the folken find out, do'ee reckon? Find out about… me?"

"Not from Andy, they won't," Roland said. "His blabber's done. And not from me, if you do as you now promise. Not from my ka-tet, either. Not out of respect for you, but out of respect for Jake Chambers. And if the Wolves fall into the trap I've laid them, why would the folken ever suspect another traitor?" He measured Slightman with his cool eyes. "They're innocent folk. Trusting. As ye know. Certainly ye used it."

The flush came back. Slightman looked down at the floor of the peak-seat again. Roland looked up and saw the place he was looking for now less than a quarter of a mile ahead. Good. There was still no dust-cloud on the eastern horizon, but he could feel it gathering in his mind. The Wolves were coming, oh yes. Somewhere across the river they had dismounted their train and mounted their horses and were riding like hell. And from it, he had no doubt.

"I did it for my son," Slightman said. "Andy came to me and said they would surely take him. Somewhere over there, Roland-" He pointed east, toward Thunderclap. "Somewhere over there are poor creatures called Breakers. Prisoners. Andy says they're telepaths and psychokinetics, and although I ken neither word, I know they're to do with the mind. The Breakers are human, and they eat what we eat to nourish their bodies, but they need other food, special food, to nourish whatever it is that makes them special."

"Brain-food," Roland said. He remembered that his mother had called fish brain-food. And then, for no reason he could tell, he found himself thinking of Susannah's nocturnal prowls. Only it wasn't Susannah who visited that midnight banquet hall; it was Mia. Daughter of none.

"Yar, I reckon," Slightman agreed. "Anyway, it's something only twins have, something that links them mind-to-mind. And these fellows-not the Wolves, but they who send the Wolves- take it out. When it's gone, the kids're idiots. Roont. It's food, Roland, do ya kennit? That's why they take em! To feed their goddamned Breakers! Not their bellies or their bodies, but their minds! And I don't even know what it is they've been set to break!"

"The two Beams that still hold the Tower," Roland said.

Slightman was thunderstruck. And fearful. "The Dark Tower?" He whispered the words. "Do ya say so?"

"I do," Roland said. "Who's Finli? Finli o' Tego."

"I don't know. A voice that takes my reports, is all. A taheen, I think-do you know what that is?"

"Do you?"

Slightman shook his head.

"Then we'll leave it. Mayhap I'll meet him in time and he'll answer to hand for this business."

Slightman did not reply, but Roland sensed his doubt. That was all right. They'd almost made it now, and the gunslinger felt an invisible band which had been cinched about his middle begin to loosen. He turned fully to the foreman for the first time. "There's always been someone like you for Andy to cozen, Slightman; I have no doubt it's mostly what he was left here for, just as I have no doubt that your daughter, Benny's sister, didn't die an accidental death. They always need one left-over twin, and one weak parent."

"You can't-"

"Shut up. You've said all that's good for you."

Slightman sat silent beside Roland on the seat.

"I understand betrayal. I've done my share of it, once to Jake himself. But that doesn't change what you are; let's have that straight. You're a carrion-bird. A rustie turned vulture."

The color was back in Slightman's cheeks, turning them the shade of claret. "I did what I did for my boy," he said stubbornly.

Roland spat into his cupped hand, then raised the hand and caressed Slightman's cheek with it. The cheek was currently full of blood, and hot to the touch. Then the gunslinger took hold of the spectacles Slightman wore and jiggled them slightly on die man's nose. "Won't wash," he said, very quiedy. "Because of these. This is how they mark you, Slightman. This is your brand. You tell yourself you did it for your boy because it gets you to sleep at night,I tell myself that what I did to Jake I did so as not to lose my chance at the Tower… and that gets me to sleep at night. The difference between us, the only difference, is that I never took a pair of spectacles." He wiped his hand on his pants. "You sold out, Slightman. And you have forgotten the face of your father."

"Let me be," Slightman whispered. He wiped the slick of the gunslinger's spittle from his cheek. It was replaced by his own tears. "For my boy's sake."

Roland nodded. "That's all this is, for your boy's sake. You drag him behind you like a dead chicken. Well, never mind. If all goes as I hope, you may live your life with him in the Calla, and grow old in the regard of your neighbors. You'll be one of those who stood up to the Wolves when the gunslingers came to town along the Path of the Beam. When you can't walk, he'll walk with you and hold you up. I see this, but I don't like what I see. Because a man who'll sell his soul for a pair of spectacles will resell it for some other prink-a-dee-even cheaper-and sooner or later your boy will find out what you are, anyway. The best thing that could happen to your son today is for you to die a hero." And then, before Slightman could reply, Roland raised his voice and shouted. "Hey, Overholser! Ho, the waggon! Overholser! Pull on over! We're here! Say thankya!"

"Roland-" Slightman began.

"No," Roland said, tying off the reins. "Palaver's done. Just remember what I said, sai: if you get a chance to die a hero today, do your son a favor and take it."

THREE

At first everything went according to plan and they called it ka. When things began going wrong and the dying started, they called that ka, too. Ka, the gunslinger could have told them, was often the last thing you had to rise above.

FOUR

Roland had explained to the children what he wanted of them while still on the common, under the flaring torches. Now, with daylight brightening (but the sun still waiting in the wings), they took their places perfectly, lining up in the road from oldest to youngest, each pair of twins holding hands. The buckas were parked on the left side of the road, their offside wheels just above the ditch. The only gap was where the track into the arroyo country split off from East Road. Standing beside the children in a stretched line were the minders, their number now swelled to well over a dozen with the addition of Tian, Pere Callahan, Slightman, and Wayne Overholser. Across from them, positioned in a line above the righthand ditch, were Eddie, Susannah, Rosa, Margaret Eisenhart, and Tian's wife, Zalia. Each of the women wore a silk-lined reed sack filled with plates. Stacked in the ditch below and behind them were boxes containing more Orizas. There were two hundred plates in all.

Eddie glanced across the river. Still no dust. Susannah gave him a nervous smile, which he returned in kind. This was the hard part-the scary part. Later, he knew, the red fog would wrap him up and carry him away. Now he was too aware. What he was aware of most was that right now they were as helpless and vulnerable as a turtle without its shell.

Jake came hustling up the line of children, carrying the box of collected odds and ends: hair ribbons, a teething infant's comfort-chewy, a whistle whittled from a yew-stick, an old shoe with most of the sole gone, a mateless sock. There were perhaps two dozen similar items.

"Benny Slightman!" Roland barked. "Frank Tavery! Francine Tavery! To me!"

"Here, now!" Benny Slightman's father said, immediately alarmed. "What're you calling my son out of line f-"

"To do his duty, just as you'll do yours," Roland said. "Not another word."

The four children he had called appeared before him. The Taverys were flushed and out of breath, eyes shining, still holding hands.

"Listen, now, and make me repeat not a single word," Roland said. Benny and the Taverys leaned forward anxiously. Although clearly impatient to be off, Jake was less anxious; he knew this part, and most of what would follow. What Roland hoped would follow.

Roland spoke to the children, but loud enough for the strung-out line of child-minders to hear, too. "You're to go up the path," he said, "and every few feet you leave something, as if 'twere dropped on a hard, fast march. And I expect you four to make a hard, fast march. Don't run, but just below it. Mind your footing. Go to where the path branches-that's half a mile- and no farther. D'you ken? Not one step farther."

They nodded eagerly. Roland switched his gaze to the adults standing tensely behind them.

"These four get a two-minute start. Then the rest of the twins go, oldest first, youngest last. They won't be going far; the last pairs will hardly get off the road." Roland raised his voice to a commanding shout. "Children! When you hear this, come back! Come to me a-hurry! " Roland put the first two fingers of his left hand into the corners of his mouth and blew a whistle so piercing that several children put their hands to their ears.

Annabelle Javier said, "Sai, if you mean for the children to hide in one of the caves, why would you call them back?"

"Because they're not going into the caves," Roland said. "They're going down there." He pointed east. "Lady Oriza is going to take care of the children. They're going to hide in the rice, just this side of the river." They all looked where he pointed, and so it was they all saw the dust at the same time.

The Wolves were coming.

FIVE

"Our company's on the way, sugarpie," Susannah said.

Roland nodded, then turned to Jake. "Go on, Jake. Just as I say."

Jake pulled a double handful of stuff from the box and handed it to the Tavery twins. Then he jumped the lefthand ditch, graceful as a deer, and started up the arroyo track with Benny beside him. Frank and Francine were right behind; as Roland watched, Francine let a little hat fall from her hand.

"All right," Overholser said. "I ken some of it, do ya. The Wolves'll see the cast-offs and be even surer the kids are up there. But why send the rest of em north at all, gunslinger? Why not just march em down to the rice right now?"

"Because we have to assume the Wolves can smell the track of prey as well as real Wolves," Roland said. He raised his voice again. "Children, up the path! Oldest first! Hold the hand of your partner and don't let go! Come back at my whistle!"

The children started off, helped into the ditch by Callahan, Sarey Adams, the Javiers, and Ben Slightman. All the adults looked anxious; only Benny's Da' looked mistrustful, as well.

"The Wolves will start in because they've reason to believe the children are up there," Roland said, "but they're not fools, Wayne. They'll look for sign and we'll give it to em. If they smell-and I'd bet this town's last rice crop that they do- they'll have scent as well as dropped shoes and ribbons to look at. After the smell of the main group stops, that of the four I sent first will carry on yet awhile farther. It may suck em in deeper, or it may not. By then it shouldn't matter."

"But-"

Roland ignored him. He turned toward his little band of fighters. They would be seven in all. It's a good number, he told himself. A number of power. He looked beyond them at the dust-cloud. It rose higher than any of the remaining seminon dust-devils, and was moving with horrible speed. Yet for the time being, Roland thought they were all right.

"Listen and hear." It was Zalia, Margaret, and Rosa to whom he was speaking. The members of his own ka-tet already knew this part, had since old Jamie whispered his long-held secret into Eddie's ear on the Jaffordses' porch. "The Wolves are neither men nor monsters; they're robots."

"Robots! "Overholser shouted, but with surprise rather than disbelief.

"Aye, and of a kind my ka-tet has seen before," Roland said. He was thinking of a certain clearing where the great bear's final surviving retainers had chased each other in an endless worry-circle. "They wear hoods to conceal tiny twirling things on top of their heads. They're probably this wide and this long." Roland showed them a height of about two inches and a length of about five. "It's what Molly Doolin hit and snapped off with her dish, once upon a time. She hit by accident. We'll hit a-purpose."

"Thinking-caps," Eddie said. "Their connection to the outside world. Without em, they're as dead as dogshit."

"Aim here." Roland held his right hand an inch above the crown of his head.

"But the chests… the gills in the chests…" Margaret began, sounding utterly bewildered.

"Bullshit now and ever was," Roland said. "Aim at the tops of the hoods."

"Someday," Tian said, "I'm going to know why there had to be so much buggering bullshit."

"I hope there is a someday," Roland said. The last of the children-the youngest ones-were just starting up the path, obediently holding hands. The eldest would be perhaps an eighth of a mile up, Jake's quartet at least an eighth of a mile beyond that. It would have to be enough. Roland turned his attention to the child-minders.

"Now they come back," he said. "Take them across the ditch and through the corn in two side-by-side rows." He cocked a thumb over his shoulder without looking. "Do I have to tell you how important it is that the corn-plants not be disturbed, especially close to the road, where the Wolves can see?"

They shook their heads.

"At the edge of the rice," Roland continued, "take them into one of the streams. Lead them almost to the river, then have them lie down where it's tall and still green." He moved his hands apart, his blue eyes blazing. "Spread em out. You grownups get on the river side of em. If there's trouble-more Wolves, something else we don't expect-that's the side it'll come from."

Without giving them a chance to ask questions, Roland buried his fingers in the corners of his mouth again and whistled. Vaughn Eisenhart, Krella Anselm, and Wayne Overholser joined the others in the ditch and began bellowing for the little 'uns to turn around and start back toward the road. Eddie, meanwhile, took another look over his shoulder and was stunned to see how far toward the river the dust-cloud had progressed. Such rapid movement made perfect sense once you knew the secret; those gray horses weren't horses at all, but mechanical conveyances disguised to look like horses, no more than that. Like a fleet of government Chewies, he thought.

"Roland, they're coming fast! Like hell!"

Roland looked. "We're all right," he said.

"Are you sure?" Rosa asked.

"Yes."

The youngest children were now hurrying back across the road, hand-in-hand, bug-eyed with fear and excitement. Cantab of the Manni and Ara, his wife, were leading them. She told them to walk straight down the middle of the rows and try not to even brush any of the skeletal plants.

"Why, sai?" asked one tyke, surely no older than four. There was a suspicious dark patch on the front of his overalls. "Corn all picked, see."

"It's a game," Cantab said. "A don't-touch-the-corn game." He began to sing. Some of the children joined in, but most were too bewildered and frightened.

As the pairs crossed the road, growing taller and older as they came, Roland cast another glance to the east. He estimated the Wolves were still ten minutes from the other side of the Whye, and ten minutes should be enough, but gods, they were fast! It had already crossed his mind that he might have to keep Slightman the Younger and the Tavery twins up here, with them. It wasn't in the plan, but by the time things got this far, the plan almost always started to change. Had to change.

Now the last of the kids were crossing, and only Overholser, Callahan, Slightman the Elder, and Sarey Adams were still on the road.

"Go," Roland told them.

"I want to wait for my boy!" Slightman objected.

"Go!"

Slightman looked disposed to argue the point, but Sarey Adams touched one elbow and Overholser actually took hold of the other.

"Come'ee," Overholser said. "The man'll take care of yours same as he'll take care of his."

Slightman gave Roland a final doubtful look, then stepped over the ditch and began herding the tail end of the line downhill, along with Overholser and Sarey.

"Susannah, show them the hide," Roland said.

They'd been careful to make sure the kids crossed the ditch on the road's river side well down from where they had done their digging the day before. Now, using one of her capped and shortened legs, Susannah kicked aside a tangle of leaves, branches, and dead corn-plants-the sort of thing one would expect to see left behind in a roadside runoff ditch-and exposed a dark hole.

"It's just a trench," she said, almost apologetically. "There's boards over the top. Light ones, easy to push back. That's where we'll be. Roland's made a… oh, I don't know what you call it, we call it a periscope where I come from, a thing with mirrors inside it you can see through… and when the time comes, we just stand up. The boards'll fall away around us when we do."

"Where's Jake and those other three?" Eddie asked. "They should be back by now."

"It's too soon," Roland said. "Calm down, Eddie."

"I won't calm down and it's not too soon. We should at least be able to see them. I'm going over there-"

"No, you're not," Roland said. "We have to get as many as we can before they figure out what's going on. That means keeping our firepower over here, at their backs."

"Roland, something's not right."

Roland ignored him. "Lady-sais, slide in there, do ya please. The extra boxes of plates will be on your end; we'll just kick some leaves over them."

He looked across the road as Zalia, Rosa, and Margaret began to worm into the hole Susannah had disclosed. The path to the arroyo was now completely empty. There was still no sign of Jake, Benny, and the Tavery twins. He was beginning to think that Eddie was right; that something had gone amiss.

SIX

Jake and his companions reached the place where the trail split quickly and without incident. Jake had held back two items, and when they reached the fork, he threw a broken rattle toward the Gloria and a little girl's woven string bracelet toward the Redbird. Choose, he thought, and be damned to you either way.

When he turned, he saw the Tavery twins had already started back. Benny was waiting for him, his face pale and his eyes shining. Jake nodded to him and made himself return Benny's smile. "Let's go," he said.

Then they heard Roland's whistle and the twins broke into a run, despite the scree and fallen rock which littered the path. They were still holding hands, weaving their way around what they couldn't simply scramble over.

"Hey, don't run!" Jake shouted. "He said not to run and mind your f-"

That was when Frank Tavery stepped into the hole. Jake heard the grinding, snapping sound his ankle made when it broke, knew from the horrified wince on Benny's face that he had, too. Then Frank let out a low, screaming moan and pitched sideways. Francine grabbed for him and got a hand on his upper arm, but the boy was too heavy. He fell through her grip like a sashweight. The thud of his skull colliding with the granite outcrop beside him was far louder than the sound his ankle had made. The blood which immediately began to flow from the wound in his scalp was brilliant in the early morning light.

Trouble, Jake thought. And in our road.

Benny was gaping, his cheeks the color of cottage cheese. Francine was already kneeling beside her brother, who lay at a twisted, ugly angle with his foot still caught in the hole. She was making high, breathless keening sounds. Then, all at once, the keening stopped. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets and she pitched forward over her unconscious twin brother in a dead faint.

"Come on," Jake said, and when Benny only stood there, gawping, Jake punched him in the shoulder. "For your father's sake!"

That got Benny moving.

SEVEN

Jake saw everything with a gunslinger's cold, clear vision. The blood splashed on the rock. The clump of hair stuck in it. The foot in the hole. The spittle on Frank Tavery's lips. The swell of his sister's new breast as she lay awkwardly across him. The Wolves were coming now. It wasn't Roland's whistle that told him this, but the touch. Eddie, he uiought Eddie wants to come over here.

Jake had never tried using the touch to send, but he did now: Stay where you are! If we can't get back in time we'll try to hide while they go past BUT DON'T YOU COME DOWN HERE! DON'T YOU SPOIL THINGS!

He had no idea if the message got through, but he did know it was all he had time for. Meanwhile, Benny was… what? What was le mot juste? Ms. Avery back at Piper had been very big on le mot juste. And it came to him. Gibbering. Benny was gibbering.

"What are we gonna do, Jake? Man Jesus, both of them! They were fine! Just running, and then… what if the Wolves come? What if they come while we're still here? We better leave em, don't you think?"

"We're not leaving them," Jake said. He leaned down and grabbed Francine Tavery by the shoulders. He yanked her into a sitting position, moslyy to get her off her brother so Frank could breathe. Her head lolled back, her hair streaming like dark silk.

Her eyelids fluttered, showing glabrous white beneath. Without thinking, Jake slapped her. And hard.

"Ow! Ow!" Her eyes flew open, blue and beautiful and shocked.

"Get up!" Jake shouted. "Get off him!"

How much time had passed? How still everything was, now that the children had gone back to the road! Not a single bird cried out, not even a rustic. He waited for Roland to whistle again, but Roland didn't. And really, why would he? They were on their own now.

Francine rolled aside, then staggered to her feet. "Help him… please, sai, I beg…"

"Benny. We have to get his foot out of the hole." Benny dropped to one knee on the other side of the awkwardly sprawled boy. His face was still pale, but his lips were pressed together in a tight straight line that Jake found encouraging. "Take his shoulder."

Benny grasped Frank Tavery's right shoulder. Jake took the left. Their eyes met across die unconscious boy's body. Jake nodded.

"Now."

They pulled together. Frank Tavery's eyes flew open-they were as blue and as beautiful as his sister's-and he uttered a scream so high it was soundless. But his foot did not come free.

It was stuck deep.

EIGHT

Now a gray-green shape was resolving itself out of the dust-cloud and they could hear the drumming of many hooves on hardpan. The three Calla women were in the hide. Only Roland, Eddie, and Susannah still remained in the ditch, the men standing, Susannah kneeling with her strong thighs spread. They stared across the road and up the arroyo path. The path was still empty.

"I heard something," Susannah said. "I think one of em's hurt."

"Fuck it, Roland, I'm going after them," Eddie said.

"Is that what Jake wants or what you want?" Roland asked.

Eddie flushed. He had heard Jake in his head-not the exact words, but the gist-and he supposed Roland had, too.

"There's a hundred kids down there and only four over there," Roland said. "Get under cover, Eddie. You too, Susannah."

"What about you?" Eddie asked.

Roland pulled in a deep breath, let it out. "I'll help if I can."

"You're not going after him, are you?" Eddie looked at Roland with mounting disbelief. "You're really not."

Roland glanced toward the dust-cloud and the gray-green cluster beneath it, which would resolve itself into individual horses and riders in less than a minute. Riders with snarling wolf faces framed in green hoods. They weren't riding toward the river so much as they were swooping down on it.

"No," Roland said. "Can't. Get under cover."

Eddie stood where he was a moment longer, hand on the butt of the big revolver, pale face working. Then, without a word, he turned from Roland and grasped Susannah's arm. He knelt beside her, then slid into the hole. Now there was only Roland, the big revolver slung low on his left hip, looking across the road at the empty arroyo path.

NINE

Benny Slightman was a well-built lad, but he couldn't move the chunk of rock holding the Tavery boy's foot. Jake saw that on the first pull. His mind (his cold, cold mind) tried to judge the weight of the imprisoned boy against the weight of the imprisoning stone. He guessed the stone weighed more.

"Francine."

She looked at him from eyes which were now wet and a little blinded by shock.

"You love him?" Jake asked.

"Aye, with all my heart!"

He is your heart, Jake thought. Good. "Then help us. Pull him as hard as you can when I say. Never mind if he screams, pull him anyway."

She nodded as if she understood. Jake hoped she did.

"If we can't get him out this time, we'll have to leave him."

"I'll never!" she shouted.

It was no time for argument. Jake joined Benny beside the flat white rock. Beyond its jagged edge, Frank's bloody shin disappeared into a black hole. The boy was fully awake now, and gasping. His left eye rolled in terror. The right one was buried in a sheet of blood. A flap of scalp was hanging over his ear.

"We're going to lift the rock and you're going to pull him out," Jake told Francine. "On three. You ready?"

When she nodded, her hair fell across her face in a curtain. She made no attempt to get it out of the way, only seized her brother beneath the armpits.

"Francie, don't hurt me," he moaned.

"Shut up," she said.

"One," Jake said. "You pull this fucker, Benny, even if it pops your balls. You hear me?"

"Yer-bugger, just count."

"Two. Three"

They pulled, crying out at the strain. The rock moved. Francine yanked her brother backward with all her force, also crying out.

Frank Tavery's scream as his foot came free was loudest of all.

TEN

Roland heard hoarse cries of effort, overtopped by a scream of pure agony. Something had happened over there, and Jake had done something about it. The question was, had it been enough to put right whatever had gone wrong?

Spray flew in the morning light as the Wolves plunged into the Whye and began galloping across on their gray horses. Roland could see them clearly now, coming in waves of five and six, spurring their mounts. He put the number at sixty. On the far side of the river, they'd disappear beneath the shoulder of a grass-covered bluff. Then they'd reappear, less than a mile away.

They would disappear one last time, behind one final hill-all of them, if they stayed bunched up as they were now-and that would be the last chance for Jake to come, for all of them to get under cover.

He stared up the path, willing the children to appear-willing Jake to appear-but the path remained empty.

Wolves streaming up the west bank of the river now, their horses casting off showers of droplets which glittered in the morning sun like gold. Clods of earth and sprays of sand flew. Now the hoofbeats were an approaching thunder.

ELEVEN

Jake took one shoulder, Benny the other. They carried Frank Tavery down the path that way, plunging ahead with reckless speed, hardly even looking down at the tumbles of rock. Francine ran just behind them.

They came around the final curve, and Jake felt a surge of gladness when he saw Roland in the ditch opposite, still Roland, standing watch with his good left hand on the butt of his gun and his hat tipped back from his brow.

"It's my brother!" Francine was shouting at him. "He fell down! He got his foot caught in a hole!"

Roland suddenly dropped out of sight.

Francine looked around, not frightened, exactly, but uncomprehending. "What-?"

"Wait," Jake said, because that was all he knew to say. He had no other ideas. If that was true of the gunslinger as well, they'd probably die here.

"My ankle… burning," Frank Tavery gasped.

"Shut up," Jake said.

Benny laughed. It was shock-laughter, but it was also real laughter. Jake looked at him around the sobbing, bleeding Frank Tavery… and winked. Benny winked back. And, just like that, they were friends again.

TWELVE

As she lay in the darkness of the hide with Eddie on her left and the acrid smell of leaves in her nose, Susannah felt a sudden cramp seize her belly. She had just time to register it before an icepick of pain, blue and savage, plunged into the left side of her brain, seeming to numb that entire side of her face and neck. At the same instant the image of a great banquet hall filled her mind: steaming roasts, stuffed fish, smoking steaks, magnums of champagne, frigates filled with gravy, rivers of red wine. She heard a piano, and a singing voice. That voice was charged with an awful sadness. "Someone saved, someone saved, someone saved my li-iife tonight," it sang.

No! Susannah cried to the force that was trying to engulf her. And did that force have a name? Of course it did. Its name was Mother, its hand was the one that rocked the cradle, and the hand that rocks the cradle rules the w-

No! You have to let me finish this! Afterward, if you want to have it, I'll help you! I'll help you have it! But if you try to force this on me now, I'll fight you tooth and nail! And if it comes to getting myself killed, and killing your precious chap along with me, I'll do it! Do you hear me, you bitch?

For a moment there was nothing but the darkness, the press of Eddie's leg, the numbness in the left side of her face, the thunder of the oncoming horses, the acrid smell of the leaves, and the sound of the Sisters breathing, getting ready for their own battle. Then, each of her words articulated clearly from a place above and behind Susannah's left eye, Mia for the first time spoke to her.

Fight your fight, woman. I'll even help, if I can. And then keep your promise.

"Susannah?" Eddie murmured from beside her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said. And she was. The icepick was gone. The voice was gone. So was the terrible numbness. But close by, Mia was waiting.

THIRTEEN

Roland lay on his belly in the ditch, now watching the Wolves with one eye of imagination and one of intuition instead of with those in his head. The Wolves were between the bluff and the hill, riding full-out with their cloaks streaming behind them. They'd all disappear behind the hill for perhaps seven seconds. If, that was, they stayed bunched together and the leaders didn't start to pull ahead. If he had calculated their speed correctly. If he was right, he'd have five seconds when he could motion Jake and the others to come. Or seven. If he was right, they'd have those same five seconds to cross the road. If he was wrong (or if the others were slow), the Wolves would either see the man in the ditch, the children in the road, or all of them. The distances would likely be too great to use their weapons, but that wouldn't much matter, because the carefully crafted ambush would be blown. The smart tiling would be to stay down, and leave the kids over there to their fate. Hell, four kids caught on the arroyo path would make the Wolves more sure than ever that the rest of them were stashed farther on, in one of the old mines.

Enough thinking, Cort said in his head. If you mean to move, maggot, this is your only chance.

Roland shot to his feet. Directly across from him, protected by the cluster of tumbled boulders which marked the East Road end of the arroyo path, stood Jake and Benny Slightman, with the Tavery boy supported between them. The kid was bloody both north and south; gods knew what had happened to him. His sister was looking over his shoulder. In that instant they looked not just like twins but Kaffin twins, joined at the body.

Roland jerked both hands extravagandy back over his head, as if clawing for a grip in the air: To me, come! Come! At the same time, he looked east. No sign of the Wolves; good. The hill had momentarily blocked them all.

Jake and Benny sprinted across the road, still dragging the boy between them. Frank Tavery's shor'boots dug fresh grooves in the oggan. Roland could only hope the Wolves would attach no especial significance to the marks.

The girl came last, light as a sprite. "Down!" Roland snarled, grabbing her shoulder and throwing her flat. "Down, down, down!" He landed beside her and Jake landed on top of him. Roland could feel the boy's madly beating heart between his shoulderblades, through both of their shirts, and had a moment to relish the sensation.

Now the hoofbeats were coming hard and strong, swelling every second. Had they been seen by the lead riders? It was impossible to know, but they would know, and soon. In the meantime they could only go on as planned. It would be tight quarters in the hide with three extra people in there, and if the Wolves had seen Jake and the other three crossing the road, they would all no doubt be cooked where they lay without a single shot fired or plate thrown, but there was no time to worry about that now. They had a minute left at most, Roland estimated, maybe only forty seconds, and that last little bit of time was melting away beneath them.

"Get off me and under cover," he said to Jake. "Right now."

The weight disappeared. Jake slipped into the hide.

"You're next, Frank Tavery," Roland said. "And be quiet. Two minutes from now you can scream all you want, but for now, keep your mouth shut. That goes for all of you."

"I'll be quiet," the boy said huskily. Benny and Frank's sister nodded.

"We're going to stand up at some point and start shooting," Roland said. "You three-Frank, Francine, Benny-stay down. Stay flat." He paused. "For your lives, stay out of our way."

FOURTEEN

Roland lay in the leaf- and dirt-smelling dark, listening to the harsh breathing of the children on his left. This sound was soon overwhelmed by that of approaching hooves. The eye of imagination and that of intuition opened once more, and wider than ever. In no more than thirty seconds-perhaps as few as fifteen-the red rage of battle would do away with all but the most primitive seeing, but for now he saw all, and all he saw was exactly as he wanted it to be. And why not? What good did visualizing plans gone astray ever do anyone?

He saw the twins of the Calla lying sprawled like corpses in the thickest, wettest part of the rice, with the muck oozing through their shirts and pants. He saw the adults beyond them, almost to the place where rice became riverbank. He saw Sarey Adams with her plates, and Ara of the Manni-Cantab's wife- with a few of her own, for Ara also threw (although as one of the Manni-folk, she could never be at fellowship with the other women). He saw a couple of the men-Estrada, Anselm, Overholser-with their bahs hugged to their chests. Instead of a bah, Vaughn Eisenhart was hugging the rifle Roland had cleaned for him. In the road, approaching from the east, he saw rank upon rank of green-cloaked riders on gray horses. They were slowing now. The sun was finally up and gleaming on the metal of their masks. The joke of those masks, of course, was that there was more metal beneath them. Roland let the eye of his imagining rise, looking for other riders-a party coming into the undefended town from the south, for instance. He saw none. In his own mind, at least, the entire raiding party was here. And if they'd swallowed the line Roland and the Ka-Tet of the Ninety and Nine had paid out with such care, it should be here. He saw the bucka waggons lined up on the town side of the road and had time to wish they'd freed the teams from the traces, but of course this way it looked better, more hurried. He saw the path leading into the arroyos, to the mines both abandoned and working, to the honeycomb of caves beyond them. He saw the leading Wolves rein up here, dragging the mouths of their mounts into snarls with their gauntleted hands. He saw through their eyes, saw pictures not made of warm human sight but cold, like those in the Magda-seens. Saw the child's hat Francine Tavery had let drop. His mind had a nose as well as an eye, and it smelled the bland yet fecund aroma of children. It smelled something rich and fatty-the stuff the Wolves would take from the children they abducted. His mind had an ear as well as a nose, and it heard-faintly-the same sort of clicks and clunks that had emanated from Andy, the same low whining of relays, servomotors, hydraulic pumps, gods knew what other machinery. His mind's eye saw the Wolves first inspecting the confusion of tracks on the road (he hoped it looked like a confusion to them), then looking up the arroyo path. Because imagining them looking the other way, getting ready to broil the ten of them in their hide like chickens in a roasting pan, would do him no good. No, they were looking up the arroyo path. Must be looking up the arroyo path. They were smelling children- perhaps their fear as well as the powerful stuff buried deep in their brains-and seeing the few tumbled bits of trash and treasure their prey had left behind. Standing there on their mechanical horses. Looking.

Go in, Roland urged silently. He felt Jake stir a little beside him, hearing his thought. His prayer, almost. Go in. Go after them. Take what you will.

There was a loud clack! sound from one of the Wolves. This was followed by a brief blurt of siren. The siren was followed by the nasty warbling whistle Jake had heard out at the Dogan. After that, the horses began to move again. First there was the soft thud of their hooves on the oggan, then on the far stonier ground of the arroyo path. There was nothing else; these horses didn't whinny nervously, like those still harnessed to the buckas. For Roland, it was enough. They had taken the bait. He slipped his revolver out of its holster. Beside him, Jake shifted again and Roland knew he was doing the same thing.

He had told them the formation to expect when they burst out of the hide: about a quarter of the Wolves on one side of the path, looking toward the river, a quarter of their number turned toward the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Or perhaps a few more in that direction, since if there was trouble, the town was where the Wolves-or the Wolves' programmers-would reasonably expect it to come from. And the rest? Thirty or more? Already up the path. Hemmed in, do ya.

Roland began counting to twenty, but when he got to nineteen decided he'd counted enough. He gathered his legs beneath him-there was no dry twist now, not so much as a twinge-and then pistoned upward with his father's gun held high in his hand.

"For Gilead and the Calla! " he roared. "Now, gunslingers! Now, you Sisters of Oriza! Now, now! Kill them! No quarter! Kill them all!"

FIFTEEN

They burst up and out of the earth like dragon's teeth. Boards flew away to either side of them, along with dry flurries of weeds and leaves. Roland and Eddie each had one of the big revolvers with the sandalwood grips. Jake had his father's Ruger. Margaret, Rosa, and Zalia each held a Riza. Susannah had two, her arms crossed over her breasts as though she were cold.

The Wolves were deployed exactly as Roland had seen them with the cool killer's eye of his imagination, and he felt a moment of triumph before all lesser thought and emotion was swept away beneath the red curtain. As always, he was never so happy to be alive as when he was preparing to deal death. Five minutes' worth of blood and stupidity, he'd told them, and here those five minutes were. He'd also told them he always felt sick afterward, and while that was true enough, he never felt so fine as he did at this moment of beginning; never felt so completely and truly himself. Here were the tag ends of glory's old cloud. It didn't matter that they were robots; gods, no! What mattered was that they had been preying on the helpless for generations, and this time they had been caught utterly and completely by surprise.

"Top of the hoods!" Eddie screamed, as in his right hand Roland's pistol began to thunder and spit fire. The harnessed horses and mules reared in the traces; a couple screamed in surprise. "Top of the hoods, get the thinking-caps!"

And, as if to demonstrate his point, the green hoods of three riders to the right of the path twitched as if plucked by invisible fingers. Each of the three beneath pitched bonelessly out of their saddles and struck the ground. In Gran-pere's story of the Wolf Molly Doolin had brought down, there had been a good deal of twitching afterward, but these three lay under the feet of their prancing horses as still as stones. Molly might not have hit the hidden "thinking-cap" cleanly, but Eddie knew what he was shooting for, and had.

Roland also began to fire, shooting from the hip, shooting almost casually, but each bullet found its mark. He was after the ones on the path, wanting to pile up bodies there, to make a barricade if he could.

"Riza flies true! " Rosalita Munoz shrieked. The plate she was holding left her hand and bolted across the East Road with an unremitting rising shriek. It clipped through the hood of a rider at the head of the arroyo path who was trying desperately to rein his horse around. The thing fell backward, feet up to heaven, and landed upside down with its boots in the road.

"Riza!" That was Margaret Eisenhart.

"For my brother!" Zalia cried.

"Lady Riza come for your asses, you bastards!" Susannah uncrossed her arms and threw both plates outward. They flew, screaming, crisscrossed in midair, and both found their mark. Scraps of green hooding fluttered down; the Wolves to whom the hoods had belonged fell faster and harder.

Bright rods of fire now glowed in the morning light as the jostling, struggling riders on either side of the path unsheathed their energy weapons. Jake shot the thinking-cap of the first one to unsheathe and it fell on its own bitterly sizzling sword, catching its cloak afire. Its horse shied sideways, into the descending light-stick of the rider to the direct left. Its head came off, disclosing a nest of sparks and wires. Now the sirens began to blat steadily, burglar alarms in hell.

Roland had thought the Wolves closest to town might try to break off and flee toward the Calla. Instead the nine on that side still left-Eddie had taken six with his first six shots-spurred past the buckas and directly toward them. Two or three hurled humming silvery balls.

"Eddie! Jake! Sneetches! Your right!"

They swung in that direction immediately, leaving the women, who were hurling plates as fast as they could pull them from their silk-lined bags. Jake was standing with his legs spread and the Ruger held out in his right hand, his left bracing his right wrist. His hair was blowing back from his brow. He was wide-eyed and handsome, smiling. He squeezed off three quick shots, each one a whipcrack in the morning air. He had a vague, distant memory of the day in the woods when he had shot pottery out of the sky. Now he was shooting at something far more dangerous, and he was glad. Glad. The first three of the flying balls exploded in brilliant flashes of bluish light. A fourth jinked, then zipped straight at him. Jake ducked and heard it pass just above his head, humming like some sort of pissed-off toaster oven. It would turn, he knew, and come back.

Before it could, Susannah swiveled and fired a plate at it. The plate flew straight to the mark, howling. When it struck, both it and the sneetch exploded. Sharpnel rained down in the corn-plants, setting some of them alight.

Roland reloaded, the smoking barrel of his revolver momentarily pointed down between his feet. Beyond Jake, Eddie was doing the same.

A Wolf jumped the tangled heap of bodies at the head of the arroyo path, its green cloak floating out behind it, and one of Rosa's plates tore back its hood, for a moment revealing the radar dish beneath. The thinking caps of the bear's retinue had been moving slowly and jerkily; this one was spinning so fast its shape was only a metallic blur. Then it was gone and the Wolf went tumbling to the side and onto the team which had drawn Overholser's lead waggon. The horses flinched backward, shoving the bucka into the one behind, mashing four whinnying, rearing animals between. These tried to bolt but had nowhere to go. Overholser's bucka teetered, then overturned. The downed Wolf's horse gained the road, stumbled over the body of another Wolf lying there, and went sprawling in the dust, one of its legs jutting off crookedly to the side.

Roland's mind was gone; his eye saw everything. He was reloaded. The Wolves who had gone up the path were pinned behind a tangled heap of bodies, just as he had hoped. The group of fifteen on the town side had been decimated, only two left. Those on the right were trying to flank the end of the ditch, where the three Sisters of Oriza and Susannah anchored their line. Roland left the remaining two Wolves on his side to Eddie and Jake, sprinted down the trench to stand behind Susannah, and began firing at the ten remaining Wolves bearing down on them. One raised a sneetch to throw, then dropped it as Roland's bullet snapped off its thinking-cap. Rosa took another one, Margaret Eisenhart a third.

Margaret dipped to get another plate. When she stood up again, a light-stick swept off her head, setting her hair on fire as it tumbled into the ditch. And Benny's reaction was understandable; she had been almost a second mother to him. When the burning head landed beside him, he batted it aside and scrambled out of the ditch, blind with panic, howling in terror.

"Benny, no, get back!"Jake cried.

Two of the remaining Wolves threw their silver deathballs at the crawling, screaming boy. Jake shot one out of the air. He never had a chance at the other. It struck Benny Slightman in the chest and the boy simply exploded outward, one arm tearing free of his body and landing palm-up in the road.

Susannah cut the thinking-cap off the Wolf which had killed Margaret with one plate, then did for the one who had killed Jake's friend with another. She pulled two fresh Rizas from her sacks and turned back to the oncoming Wolves just as the first one leaped into the ditch, its horse's chest knocking Roland asprawl. It brandished its sword over the gunslinger. To Susannah it looked like a brilliant red-orange tube of neon.

"No you don't muhfuh! " she screamed, and slung the plate in her right hand. It sheared through the gleaming saber and the weapon simply exploded at the hilt, tearing off the Wolf's arm. The next moment one of Rosa's plates amputated its thinking-cap and it tumbled sideways and crashed to the ground, its gleaming mask grinning at the paralyzed, terrified Tavery twins, who lay clinging to each other. A moment later it began to smoke and melt.

Shrieking Benny's name, Jake walked across the East Road, reloading the Ruger as he went, tracking through his dead friend's blood without realizing it. To his left, Roland, Susannah, and Rosa were putting paid to the five remaining Wolves in what had been the raiding party's north wing. The raiders whirled their horses in jerky, useless circles, seeming unsure what to do in circumstances such as these.

"Want some company, kid?" Eddie asked him. On their right, the group of Wolves who had been stationed on the town side of the arroyo path all lay dead. Only one of them had actually made it as far as the ditch; that one lay with its hooded head plowed into the freshly turned earth of the hide and its booted feet in the road. The rest of its body was wrapped in its green cloak. It looked like a bug that has died in its cocoon.

"Sure," Jake said. Was he talking or only thinking? He didn't know. The sirens blasted the air. "Whatever you want. They killed Benny."

"I know. That sucks."

"It should have been his fucking father" Jake said. Was he crying? He didn't know.

"Agreed. Have a present." Into Jake's hand Eddie dropped a couple of balls about three inches in diameter. The surfaces looked like steel, but when Jake squeezed, he felt some give- it was like squeezing a child's toy made out of hard, hard rubber. A small plate on the side read

To the left of the plate was a button. A distant part of Jake's mind wondered who Harry Potter was. The sneetch's inventor, more than likely.

They reached the heap of dead Wolves at the head of the arroyo path. Perhaps machines couldn't really be dead, but Jake was unable to think of them as anything else, tumbled and tangled as they were. Dead, yes. And he was savagely glad. From behind them came an explosion, followed by a shriek of either extreme pain or extreme pleasure. For the moment Jake didn't care which. All his attention was focused on the remaining Wolves trapped on the arroyo path. There were somewhere between eighteen and two dozen of them.

There was one Wolf out in front, its sizzling fire-stick raised. It was half-turned to its mates, and now it waved its light-stick at the road. Except that's no light-stick, Eddie thought. That's a light-saber, just like the ones in the Star Wars movies. Only these light-sabers aren't special effects -they really kill. What the hell's going on here"? Well, the guy out front was trying to rally his troops, that much seemed clear. Eddie decided to cut the sermon short. He thumbed the button in one of the three sneetches he had kept for himself. The thing began to hum and vibrate in his hand. It was sort of like holding a joy-buzzer.

"Hey, Sunshine!" he called.

The head Wolf didn't look around and so Eddie simply lobbed the sneetch at it. Thrown as easily as it was, it should have struck the ground twenty or thirty yards from the cluster of remaining Wolves and rolled to a stop. It picked up speed instead, rose, and struck the head Wolf dead center in its frozen snarl of a mouth. The thing exploded from the neck up, thinking-cap and all.

"Go on," Eddie said. "Try it. Using their own shit against em has its own special pi-"

Ignoring him, Jake dropped the sneetches Eddie had given him, stumbled over the heap of bodies, and started up the path.

"Jake? Jake, I don't think that's such a good idea-"

A hand gripped Eddie's upper arm. He whirled, raising his gun, then lowering it again when he saw Roland. "He can't hear you," the gunslinger said. "Come on. We'll stand with him."

"Wait, Roland, wait." It was Rosa. She was smeared with blood, and Eddie assumed it was poor sai Eisenhart's. He could see no wound on Rosa herself. "I want some of this," she said.

SIXTEEN

They reached Jake just as the remaining Wolves made their last charge. A few threw sneetches. These Roland and Eddie picked out of the air easily. Jake fired the Ruger in nine steady, spaced shots, right wrist clasped in left hand, and each time he fired, one of the Wolves either flipped backward out of its saddle or went sliding over the side to be trampled by the horses coming behind. When the Ruger was empty, Rosa took a tenth, screaming Lady Oriza's name. Zalia Jaffords had also joined them, and the eleventh fell to her.

While Jake reloaded the Ruger, Roland and Eddie, standing side by side, went to work. They almost certainly could have taken the remaining eight between them (it didn't much surprise Eddie that there had been nineteen in this last cluster), but they left the last two for Jake. As they approached, swinging their light-swords over their heads in a way that would have been undoubtedly terrifying to a bunch of farmers, the boy shot the thinking-cap off the one on the left. Then he stood aside, dodging as the last surviving Wolf took a halfhearted swing at him.

Its horse leaped the pile of bodies at the end of the path. Susannah was on the far side of the road, sitting on her haunches amid a litter of fallen green-cloaked machinery and melting, rotting masks. She was also covered in Margaret Eisenhart's blood.

Roland understood that Jake had left the final one for Susannah, who would have found it extremely difficult to join them on the arroyo path because of her missing lower legs. The gunslinger nodded. The boy had seen a terrible thing this morning, suffered a terrible shock, but Roland thought he would be all right. Oy-waiting for them back at the Pere's rectory-house- would no doubt help him through the worst of his grief.

"Lady Oh-RIZA!" Susannah screamed, and flung one final plate as the Wolf reined its horse around, turning it east, toward whatever it called home. The plate rose, screaming, and clipped off the top of the green hood. For a moment this last child thief sat in its saddle, shuddering and blaring out its alarm, calling for help that couldn't come. Then it snapped violently backward, turning a complete somersault in midair, and thudded to the road. Its siren cut off in mid-whoop.

And so, Roland thought, our five minutes are over. He looked dully at the smoking barrel of his revolver, then dropped it back into its holster. One by one the alarms issuing from the downed robots were stopping.

Zalia was looking at him with a kind of dazed incomprehension. "Roland!" she said.

"Yes, Zalia."

"Are they gone? Can they be gone? Really?"

"All gone," Roland said. "I counted sixty-one, and they all lie here or on the road or in our ditch."

For a moment Tian's wife only stood there, processing this information. Then she did something that surprised a man who was not often surprised. She threw herself against him, pressing her body frankly to his, and covered his face with hungry, wet-lipped kisses. Roland bore this for a little bit, then held her away. The sickness was coming now. The feeling of uselessness. The sense that he would fight this battle or battles like it over and over for eternity, losing a finger to the lobstrosities here, perhaps an eye to a clever old witch there, and after each battle he would sense the Dark Tower a little farther away instead of a little closer. And all the time the dry twist would work its way in toward his heart.

Stop that, he told himself. It's nonsense, and you know it.

"Will they send more, Roland?" Rosa asked.

"They may have no more to send," Roland said. "If they do, there'll almost certainly be fewer of them. And now you know the secret to killing them, don't you?"

"Yes," she said, and gave him a savage grin. Her eyes promised him more than kisses later on, if he'd have her.

"Go down through the corn," he told her. "You and Zalia both. Tell them it's safe to come up now. Lady Oriza has stood friend to the Calla this day. And to the line of Eld, as well."

"Will ye not come yourself?" Zalia asked him. She had stepped away from him, and her cheeks were filled with fire. "Will ye not come and let em cheer ye?"

"Perhaps later on we may all hear them cheer us," Roland said. "Now we need to speak an-tet. The boy's had a bad shock, ye ken."

"Yes," Rosa said. "Yes, all right. Come on, Zee." She reached out and took Zalia's hand. "Help me be the bearer of glad tidings."

SEVENTEEN

The two women crossed the road, making a wide berth around the tumbled, bloody remains of the poor Slightman lad. Zalia thought that most of what was left of him was only held together by his clothes, and shivered to think of the father's grief.

The young man's shor'leg lady-sai was at the far north end of the ditch, examining the bodies of the Wolves scattered there. She found one where the little revolving thing hadn't been entirely shot off, and was still trying to turn. The Wolfs green-gloved hands shivered uncontrollably in the dust, as if with palsy. While Rosa and Zalia watched, Susannah picked up a largish chunk of rock and, cool as a night in Wide Earth, brought it down on the remains of the thinking-cap. The Wolf stilled immediately. The low hum that had been coming from it stopped.

"We go to tell the others, Susannah," Rosa said. "But first we want to tell thee well-done. How we do love thee, say true!"

Zalia nodded. "We say thankya, Susannah of New York. We say thankya more big-big than could ever be told."

"Yar, say true," Rosa agreed.

The lady-sai looked up at them and smiled sweetly. For a moment Rosalita looked a little doubtful, as if maybe she saw something in that dark-brown face that she shouldn't. Saw that Susannah Dean was no longer here, for instance. Then the expression of doubt was gone. "We go with good news, Susannah," said she.

"Wish you joy of it," said Mia, daughter of none. "Bring them back as you will. Tell them the danger here's over, and let those who don't believe count the dead."

"The legs of your pants are wet, do ya," Zalia said.

Mia nodded gravely. Another contraction had turned her belly to a stone, but she gave no sign. " 'Tis blood, I'm afraid." She nodded toward the headless body of the big rancher's wife. "Hers."

The women started down through the corn, hand-in-hand. Mia watched Roland, Eddie, and Jake cross the road toward her. This would be the dangerous time, right here. Yet perhaps not too dangerous, after all; Susannah's friends looked dazed in the aftermath of the battle. If she seemed a little off her feed, perhaps they would think the same of her.

She thought mostly it would be a matter of waiting her opportunity. Waiting… and then slipping away. In the meantime, she rode the contraction of her belly like a boat riding a high wave.

They'll know where you went, a voice whispered. It wasn't a head-voice but a belly-voice. The voice of the chap. And that voice spoke true.

Take the ball with you, the voice told her. Take it with you when you go. Leave them no door to follow you through.

Aye.

EIGHTEEN

The Ruger cracked out a single shot and a horse died.

From below the road, from the rice, came a rising roar of joy that was not quite disbelieving. Zalia and Rosa had given their good news. Then a shrill cry of grief cut through the mingled voices of happiness. They had given the bad, as well.

Jake Chambers sat on the wheel of the overturned waggon. He had unharnessed the three horses that were okay. The fourth had been lying with two broken legs, foaming helplessly through its teeth and looking to the boy for help. The boy had given it. Now he sat staring at his dead friend. Benny's blood was soaking into the road. The hand on the end of Benny's arm lay palm-up, as if the dead boy wanted to shake hands with God. What God? According to current rumor, the top of the Dark Tower was empty.

From Lady Oriza's rice came a second scream of grief. Which had been Slightman, which Vaughn Eisenhart? At a distance, Jake thought, you couldn't tell the rancher from the foreman, the employer from the employee. Was there a lesson there, or was it what Ms. Avery, back at good old Piper, would have called fear, false evidence appearing real?

The palm pointing up to the brightening sky, that was certainly real.

Now the folken began to sing. Jake recognized the song. It was a new version of the one Roland had sung on their first night in Calla Bryn Sturgis.

"Come-come-commala

Rice come a-falla

I-sissa 'ay a-bralla

Dey come a-folla

We went to a-rivva

'Riza did us kivva…"

The rice swayed with the passage of the singing folken, swayed as if it were dancing for their joy, as Roland had danced for them that torchlit night. Some came with babbies in their arms, and even so burdened, they swayed from side to side. We all danced this morning, Jake thought. He didn't know what he meant, only that it was a true thought. The dance we do. The only one we know. Benny Slightman?Died dancing. SaiEisenhart, too.

Roland and Eddie came over to him; Susannah, too, but she hung back a bit, as if deciding that, at least for the time being, the boys should be with the boys. Roland was smoking, and Jake nodded at it.

"Roll me one of those, would you?"

Roland turned in Susannah's direction, eyebrows raised. She shrugged, then nodded. Roland rolled Jake a cigarette, gave it to him, then scratched a match on the seat of his pants and lit it. Jake sat on the waggon wheel, taking the smoke in occasional puffs, holding it in his mouth, then letting it out. His mouth filled up with spit. He didn't mind. Unlike some things, spit could be got rid of. He made no attempt to inhale.

Roland looked down the hill, where the first of the two running men was just entering the corn. "That's Slightman," he said. "Good."

"Why good, Roland?" Eddie asked.

"Because sai Slightman will have accusations to make," Roland said. "In his grief, he isn't going to care who hears them, or what his extraordinary knowledge might say about his part in this morning's work."

"Dance," Jake said.

They turned to look at him. He sat pale and thoughtful on the waggon-wheel, holding his cigarette. "This morning's dance," he said.

Roland appeared to consider this, then nodded. "His part in this morning's dance. If he gets here soon enough, we may be able to quiet him. If not, his son's death is only going to be the start of Ben Slightman's commala."

NINETEEN

Slightman was almost fifteen years younger than the rancher, and arrived at the site of the battle well before the other. For a moment he only stood on the far edge of the hide, considering the shattered body lying in the road. There was not so much blood, now-the oggan had drunk it greedily-but the severed arm still lay where it had been, and the severed arm told all. Roland would no more have moved it before Slightman got here than he would have opened his flies and pissed on the boy's corpse. Slightman the Younger had reached the clearing at the end of his path. His father, as next of kin, had a right to see where and how it had happened.

The man stood quiet for perhaps five seconds, then pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a shriek. It chilled Eddie's blood. He looked around for Susannah and saw she was no longer there. He didn't blame her for ducking out. This was a bad scene. The worst.

Slightman looked left, looked right, then looked straight ahead and saw Roland, standing beside the overturned waggon with his arms crossed. Beside him, Jake still sat on the wheel, smoking his first cigarette.

"YOU!" Slightman screamed. He was carrying his bah; now he unslung it. "YOU DID THIS! YOU!"

Eddie plucked the weapon deftly from Slightman's hands. "No, you don't, partner," he murmured. "You don't need this right now, why don't you let me keep it for you."

Slightman seemed not to notice. Incredibly, his right hand still made circular motions in the air, as if winding the bah for a shot.

"YOU KILLED MY SON! TO PAY ME BACK! YOU BASTARD! MURDERING BAS- "

Moving with the eerie, spooky speed that Eddie could still not completely believe, Roland seized Slightman around the neck in the crook of one arm, then yanked him forward. The move simultaneously cut off the flow of the man's accusations and drew him close.

"Listen to me," Roland said, "and listen well. I care nothing for your life or honor, one's been misspent and the other's long gone, but your son is dead and about his honor I care very much. If you don't shut up this second, you worm of creation, I'll shut you up myself. So what would you? It's nothing to me, either way. I'll tell em you ran mad at the sight of him, stole my gun out of its holster, and put a bullet in your own head to join him. What would you have? Decide."

Eisenhart was badly blown but still lurching and weaving his way up through the corn, hoarsely calling his wife's name: "Margaret!Margaret! Answer me, dear! Gi'me a word, I beg ya, do!"

Roland let go of Slightman and looked at him sternly. Slightman turned his awful eyes to Jake. "Did your dinh kill my boy in order to be revenged on me? Tell me the truth, soh."

Jake took a final puff on his cigarette and cast it away. The butt lay smoldering in the dirt next to the dead horse. "Did you even look at him?" he asked Benny's Da'. "No bullet ever made could do that. Sai Eisenhart's head fell almost on top of him and Benny crawled out of the ditch from the… the horror of it." It was a word, he realized, that he had never used out loud. Had never needed to use out loud. "They threw two of their sneetches at him. I got one, but…" He swallowed. There was a click in his throat. "The other… I would have, you ken… I tried, but…" His face was working. His voice was breaking apart. Yet his eyes were dry. And somehow as terrible as Slightman's. "I never had a chance at the other'n," he finished, then lowered his head and began to sob.

Roland looked at Slightman, his eyebrows raised.

"All right," Slightman said. "I see how 'twas. Yar. Tell me, were he brave until then? Tell me, I beg."

"He and Jake brought back one of that pair," Eddie said, gesturing to the Tavery twins. "The boy half. He got his foot caught in a hole. Jake and Benny pulled him out, then carried him. Nothing but guts, your boy. Side to side and all the way through the middle."

Slightman nodded. He took the spectacles off his face and looked at them as if he had never seen them before. He held them so, before his eyes, for a second or two, then dropped them onto the road and crushed them beneath one bootheel. He looked at Roland and Jake almost apologetically. "I believe I've seen all I need to," he said, and then went to his son.

Vaughn Eisenhart emerged from the corn. He saw his wife and gave a bellow. Then he tore open his shirt and began pounding his right fist above his flabby left breast, crying her name each time he did it.

"Oh, man," Eddie said. "Roland, you ought to stop that."

"Not I," said the gunslinger.

Slightman took his son's severed arm and planted a kiss in the palm with a tenderness Eddie found nearly unbearable. He put the arm on the boy's chest, then walked back toward them. Without the glasses, his face looked naked and somehow unformed. "Jake, would you help me find a blanket?"

Jake got off the waggon wheel to help him find what he needed. In the uncovered trench that had been the hide, Eisenhart was cradling his wife's burnt head to his chest, rocking it. From the corn, approaching, came the children and their minders, singing "The Rice Song." At first Eddie thought that what he was hearing from town must be an echo of that singing, and then he realized it was the rest of the Calla. They knew. They had heard the singing, and they knew. They were coming.

Pere Callahan stepped out of the field with Lia Jaffords cradled in his arms. In spite of the noise, the little girl was asleep. Callahan looked at the heaps of dead Wolves, took one hand from beneath the little girl's bottom, and drew a slow, trembling cross in the air.

"God be thanked," he said.

Roland went to him and took the hand that had made the cross. "Put one on me," he said.

Callahan looked at him, uncomprehending.

Roland nodded to Vaughn Eisenhart. "That one promised I'd leave town with his curse on me if harm came to his wife."

He could have said more, but there was no need. Callahan understood, and signed the cross on Roland's brow. The fingernail trailed a warmth behind it that Roland felt a long time. And although Eisenhart never kept his promise, the gunslinger was never sorry that he'd asked the Pere for that extra bit of protection.

TWENTY

What followed was a confused jubilee there on the East Road, mingled with grief for the two who had fallen. Yet even the grief had a joyful light shining through it. No one seemed to feel that the losses were in any way equal to the gains. And Eddie supposed that was true. If it wasn't your wife or your son who had fallen, that was.

The singing from town drew closer. Now they could see rising dust. In the road, men and women embraced. Someone tried to take Margaret Eisenhart's head away from her husband, who for the time being refused to let it go.

Eddie drifted over to Jake.

"Never saw Star Wars, did you?" he asked.

"No, told you. I was going to, but-"

"You left too soon. I know. Those things they were swinging-Jake, they were from that movie."

"You sure?"

"Yes. And the Wolves…Jake, the Wolves themselves…"

Jake was nodding, very slowly. Now they could see the people from town. The newcomers saw the children-all the children, still here and still safe-and raised a cheer. Those in the forefront began to run. "I know."

"Do you?" Eddie asked. His eyes were almost pleading. "Do you really? Because… man, it's so crazy -"

Jake looked at the heaped Wolves. The green hoods. The gray leggings. The black boots. The snarling, decomposing faces. Eddie had already pulled one of those rotting metal faces away and looked at what was beneath it. Nothing but smooth metal, plus lenses that served as eyes, a round mesh grille that doubtless served as a nose, two sprouted microphones at the temples for ears. No, all the personality these things had was in the masks and clothing they wore.

"Crazy or not, I know what they are, Eddie. Or where they come from, at least. Marvel Comics."

A look of sublime relief filled Eddie's face. He bent and kissed Jake on the cheek. A ghost of a smile touched the boy's mouth. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"The Spider-Man books," Eddie said. "When I was a kid I couldn't get enough of those things."

"I didn't buy em myself," Jake said, "but Timmy Mucci down at Mid-Town Lanes used to have a terrible jones for the Marvel mags. Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, all of em. These guys…"

"They look like Dr. Doom," Eddie said.

"Yeah," Jake said. "It's not exact, I'm sure the masks were modified to make them look a little more like wolves, but otherwise… same green hoods, same green cloaks. Yeah, Dr. Doom."

"And the sneetches," Eddie said. "Have you ever heard of Harry Potter?"

"I don't think so. Have you?"

"No, and I'll tell you why. Because the sneetches are from the future. Maybe from some Marvel comic book that'll come out in 1990 or 1995. Do you see what I'm saying?"

Jake nodded.

"It's all nineteen, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "Nineteen, ninety-nine, and nineteen-ninety-nine."

Eddie glanced around. "Where's Suze?"

"Probably went after her chair," Jake said. But before either of them could explore the question of Susannah Dean's whereabouts any further (and by then it was probably too late, anyway), the first of the folken from town arrived. Eddie and Jake were swept into a wild, impromptu celebration-hugged, kissed, shaken by the hand, laughed over, wept over, thanked and thanked and thanked.

TWENTY-ONE

Ten minutes after the main body of the townsfolk arrived, Rosalita reluctantly approached Roland. The gunslinger was extremely glad to see her. Eben Took had taken him by the arms and was telling him-over and over again, endlessly, it seemed- how wrong he and Telford had been, how utterly and completely wrong, and how when Roland and his ka-tet were ready to move on, Eben Took would outfit them from stem to stern and not a penny would they pay.

"Roland!" Rosa said.

Roland excused himself and took her by the arm, leading her a little way up the road. The Wolves had been scattered everywhere and were now being mercilessly looted of their possessions by the laughing, deliriously happy folken. Stragglers were arriving every minute.

"Rosa, what is it?"

"It's your lady," Rosa said. "Susannah."

"What of her?" Roland asked. Frowning, he looked around. He didn't see Susannah, couldn't remember when he had last seen her. When he'd given Jake the cigarette? That long ago? He thought so. "Where is she?"

"That's just it," Rosa said. "I don't know. So I peeked into the waggon she came in, thinking that perhaps she'd gone in there to rest. That perhaps she felt faint or gut-sick, do ya. But she's not there. And Roland… her chair is gone."

"Gods!" Roland snarled, and slammed his fist against his leg. "Oh, gods!"

Rosalita took a step back from him, alarmed.

"Where's Eddie?" Roland asked.

She pointed. Eddie was so deep in a cluster of admiring men and women that Roland didn't think he would have seen him, but for the child riding on his shoulders; it was Heddon Jaffords, an enormous grin on his face.

"Are you sure you want to disturb him?" Rosa asked timidly. "May be she's just gone off a bit, to pull herself back together."

Gone off a bit, Roland thought. He could feel a blackness filling his heart. His sinking heart. She'd gone off a bit, all right. And he knew who had stepped in to take her place. Their attention had wandered in the aftermath of the fight…Jake's grief… the congratulations of the folken… the confusion and the joy and the singing… but that was no excuse.

"Gunslingers!" he roared, and the jubilant crowd quieted at once. Had he cared to look, he could have seen the fear that lay just beneath their relief and adulation. It would not have been new to him; they were always afraid of those who came wearing the hard calibers. What they wanted of such when the shooting was done was to give them a final meal, perhaps a final gratitude-fuck, then send them on their way and pick up their own peaceful farming-tools once more.

Well, Roland thought, we'll be going soon enough. In fact, one of us has gone already. Gods!

"Gunslingers, to me! To me!"

Eddie reached Roland first. He looked around. "Where's Susannah?" he asked.

Roland pointed into the stony wasteland of bluffs and arroyos, then elevated his finger until it was pointing at a black hole just below the skyline. "I think there," he said.

All the color had drained out of Eddie Dean's face. "That's Doorway Cave you're pointing at," he said. "Isn't it?"

Roland nodded.

"But the ball… Black Thirteen… she wouldn't even go near it when it was in Callahan's church-"

"No," Roland said. "Susannah wouldn't. But she's not in charge anymore."

"Mia?" Jake asked.

"Yes." Roland studied the high hole with his faded eyes. "Mia's gone to have her baby. She's gone to have her chap."

"No," Eddie said. His hands wandered out and took hold of Roland's shirt. Around them, the folken stood silently, watching. "Roland, say no."

"We'll go after her and hope we're not too late," Roland said.

But in his heart, he knew they already were.