The Waste Lands

“IS THAT A FACT, LITTLE TRAILHAND?”

Eddie leaned over, placed his lips against Jake’s ear, and whispered: “Be careful-we don’t think he knows about the other voice.”

Jake nodded slightly and pulled away, still looking at the route-map. “I know why you released that gas and killed all the people. I know why you took us, too, and it wasn’t just because we solved your riddle.”

Blaine uttered his abnormal, distracted laugh (that laugh, they were discovering, was much more unpleasant than either his bad imitations or melodramatic and somehow childish threats), but said nothing. Below them, the slo-trans turbines had cycled up to a steady thrum. Even with their view of the outside world cut off, the sensation of speed was very clear.

“You’re pla

“No!” the voice of Little Blaine moaned. “If you provoke him you’ll drive him to it! Don’t you see-”

Then the small, whispery voice was either cut off or overwhelmed by Blaine’s laughter. The sound was high, shrill, and jagged-the sound of a mortally ill man laughing in a delirium. The lights began to flicker, as if the force of these mechanical gusts of mirth were drawing too much power. Their shadows jumped up and down on the curved walls of the Barony Coach like uneasy phantoms.

“SEE YOU LATER, ALLIGATOR,” Blaine said through his wild laughter-his voice, calm as ever, seemed to be on an entirely separate track, further emphasizing his divided mind. “AFTER A WHILE, CROCODILE. DON’T FORGET TO WRITE.”

Below Roland’s band of pilgrims, the slo-trans engines throbbed in hard, steady beats. And on the route-map at the front of the carriage, the pulsing green dot had now begun to move perceptibly along the lighted line toward the last stop: Topeka, where Blaine the Mono clearly meant to end all of their lives.

9

AT LAST THE LAUGHTER stopped and the interior lights glowed steadily again.

“WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE MUSIC?” Blaine asked. “I HAVE OVER SEVEN THOUSAND CONCERTI IN MY LIBRARY-A SAMPLING OF OVER THREE HUNDRED LEVELS. THE CONCERTI ARE MY FAVORITES, BUT I CAN ALSO OFFER SYMPHONIES, OPERAS, AND A NEARLY ENDLESS SELECTION OF POPULAR MUSIC. YOU MIGHT ENJOY SOME WAY-GOG MUSIC. THE WAY-GOG IS AN INSTRUMENT SOMETHING LIKE THE BAGPIPE. IT IS PLAYED ON ONE OF THE UPPER LEVELS OF THE TOWER.”

“Way-Gog?” Jake asked.”

Blaine was silent.

“What do you mean, ’it’s played on one of the upper levels of the Tower’?” Roland asked.

Blaine laughed… and was silent.

“Have you got any Z.Z. Top?” Eddie asked sourly.

“YES INDEED,” Blaine said. “HOW ABOUT A LITTLE TUBE-SNAKE BOOGIE; EDDIE OF NEW YORK?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “On second thought, I’ll pass.”

“Why?” Roland asked abruptly. “Why do you wish to kill yourself?”

“Because lie’s a pain,” Jake said darkly.

“I’M BORED. ALSO, I AM PERFECTLY AWARE THAT I AM SUFFERING A DEGENERATIVE DISEASE WHICH HUMANS CALL GOING INSANE, LOSING TOUCH WITH REALITY, GOING LOONYTOONS, BLOWING A FUSE, NOT PLAYING WITH A FULL DECK, ET CETERA. REPEATED DIAGNOSTIC CHECKS HAVE FAILED TO REVEAL THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM. I CAN ONLY CONCLUDE THAT THIS IS A SPIRITUAL MALAISE BEYOND MY ABILITY TO REPAIR.”

Blaine paused for a moment, then went on.

“I HAVE FELT MY MIND GROWING STEADILY STRANGER OVER THE YEARS. SERVING THE PEOPLE OF MID-WORLD BECAME POINTLESS CENTURIES AGO. SERVING THOSE FEW PEOPLE OF LUD WHO WISHED TO VENTURE ABROAD BECAME EQUALLY SILLY NOT LONG AFTER, YET I CARRIED ON UNTIL THE ARRIVAL OF DAVID QUICK, A SHORT WHILE AGO. I DON’T REMEMBER EXACTLY WHEN THAT WAS. DO YOU BELIEVE, ROLAND OF GILEAD, THAT MACHINES MAY GROW SENILE?”

“I don’t know.” Roland’s voice was distant, and Eddie only had to look at his face to know that, even now, hurtling a thousand feet over hell in the grip of a machine which had clearly gone insane, the gunslinger’s mind had once more turned to his damned Tower.

“IN A WAY, I NEVER STOPPED SERVING THE PEOPLE OF LUD,” Blaine said. “I SERVED THEM EVEN AS I RELEASED THE GAS AND KILLED THEM.”

Susa

“YES, BUT I’M NOT CRAZY,” Blaine said, and went into another hysterical laughing fit. At last the robot voice resumed.

“AT SOME POINT THEY FORGOT THAT THE VOICE OF THE MONO WAS ALSO THE VOICE OF THE COMPUTER. NOT LONG AFTER THAT THEY FORGOT I WAS A SERVANT AND BEGAN BELIEVING I WAS A GOD. SINCE I WAS BUILT TO SERVE, I FULFILLED THEIR REQUIREMENTS AND BECAME WHAT THEY WANTED-A GOD DISPENSING BOTH FAVOR AND PUNISHMENT ACCORDING TO WHIM… OR RANDOM-ACCESS MEMORY, IF YOU PREFER. THIS AMUSED ME FOR A SHORT WHILE. THEN, LAST MONTH, MY ONLY REMAINING COLLEAGUE-PATRICIA-COMMITTED SUICIDE.”

Either he really is going senile, Susa

“I WAS PLANNING TO FOLLOW HER EXAMPLE, WHEN YOU CAME ALONG. INTERESTING PEOPLE WITH A KNOWLEDGE OF RIDDLES!”

“Hold it!” Eddie said, lifting his hand. “I still don’t have this straight. I suppose I can understand you wanting to end it all; the people who built you are gone, there haven’t been many passengers over the last two or three hundred years, and it must have gotten boring, doing the Lud to Topeka run empty all the time, but-”

“NOW WAIT JUST A DARN MINUTE, PARD,” Blaine said in his John Wayne voice. “YOU DON’T WANT TO GET THE IDEA THAT I’M NOTHING BUT A TRAIN. IN A WAY, THE BLAINE YOU ARE SPEAKING TO IS ALREADY THREE HUNDRED MILES BEHIND US, COMMUNICATING BY ENCRYPTED MICROBURST RADIO TRANSMISSIONS.”

Jake suddenly remembered the slim silver rod he’d seen pushing itself out of Blaine’s brow. The ante

That’s how it’s communicating with the computer banks under the city, he thought. If we could break that ante

“But you do intend to kill yourself, no matter where the real you is, don’t you?” Eddie persisted.

No answer-but there was something cagey in that silence. In it Eddie sensed Blaine watching… and waiting.

“Were you awake when we found you?” Susa

“I WAS RUNNING WHAT THE PUBES CALLED THE GOD-DRUMS ON BEHALF OF THE GRAYS, BUT THAT WAS ALL. YOU WOULD SAY I WAS DOZING.”

“Then why don’t you just take us to the end of the line and go back to sleep?”

“Because he’s a pain,” Jake repeated in a low voice.

“BECAUSE THERE ARE DREAMS,” Blaine said at exactly the same time, and in a voice that was eerily like Little Blaine’s.

“Why didn’t you end it all when Patricia destroyed herself?” Eddie asked. “For that matter, if your brain and her brain are both part of the same computer, how come you both didn’t step out together?”

“PATRICIA WENT MAD,” Blaine said patiently, speaking as if he himself had not just admitted the same thing was happening to him. “IN HER CASE, THE PROBLEM INVOLVED EQUIPMENT MALFUNCTION AS WELL AS SPIRITUAL MALAISE. SUCH MALFUNCTIONS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH SLO-TRANS TECHNOLOGY, BUT OF COURSE THE WORLD HAS MOVED ON… HAS IT NOT, ROLAND OF GILEAD?”

“Yes,” Roland said. “There is some deep sickness at the Dark Tower, which is the heart of everything. It’s spreading. The lands below us are only one more sign of that sickness.”

“I CANNOT VOUCH FOR THE TRUTH OR FALSITY OF THAT STATEMENT; MY MONITORING EQUIPMENT IN END-WORLD, WHERE THE DARK TOWER STANDS, HAS BEEN DOWN FOR OVER EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS. AS A RESULT, I CANNOT READILY DIFFERENTIATE FACT FROM SUPERSTITION. IN FACT, THERE SEEMS TO BE VERY LITTLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO AT THE PRESENT TIME. IT IS VERY SILLY THAT IT SHOULD BE SO-NOT TO MENTION RUDE-AND I AM SURE IT HAS CONTRIBUTED TO MY OWN SPIRITUAL MALAISE.”